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A DOUBLE OVERTURE 


By E. F. BENSON 

AUTHOR OF “DODO, A DETAIL OF THE DAY” 





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Yol. 1, No. 2, New Series. Issued Quarterly. January 1894. 

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A DOUBLE OVERTURE 

' * N 


BY 


/ / 

E. F. BENSON 


& 


DODO 


AUTHOR OF 

A DETAIL OF THF DAY 






CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. SERGEL COMPANY 
1894 




Copyright, 1893, by 
Charles H. Sergel Company. 


crvA-/ 



CONTENTS 


A DOUBLE OVERTURE . 





PAGE 

. 9 

ONCE 





• 

25 

AUTUMN AND DOVE 





• 

41 

TWO DAYS AFTER 





• 

51 

CARRINGTON 





• 

61 

JACK AND POEE . 





• 

73 

AT KING’S CROSS STATION . 





• 

87 

THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING . 




• 

99 

BEUE STRIPE 





• 

113 

A WINTER MORNING . 





• 

123 

THE ZOO .... 




.\ 

• 

135 

THE THREE OED EADIES . 





• 

147 

EIRE A GRAMMARIAN 





• 

157 

POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD . 





• 

173 

THE DEFEAT OF EADY GRANTHAM 




• 

187 

THE TRAGEDY OF A GREEN 

TOTEM 




• 

201 

THE DEATH WARRANT 

• 

• 


• 

» 

215 



A DOUBLE OVERTURE 


L ADY HAYES was looking extremely 
bored, but that was her normal con- 
dition, and had not necessarily anything to 
do with the fact that I was having tea with 
her. She was delivering herself of her 
opinions on the futility of existence. 

“Nobody really seems to care about any- 
thing,” she was saying, “and I am sure I 
don’t. No one in Eondon is ever enthusiastic, 
and there really seems no reason why they 
should be. How stupid it all is! To-night, 
for instance, what a programme! I go out to 
dinner, and every one will ask me if I enjoyed 
Ascot very much, and whether I have read 
the last inane three- volume novel, and I shall 
say that I detest Ascot and I don’t know 
what the last three-volume novel is. Then I 
go to a ball, and every one will say how lovely 


IO 


A DOUBLE OVERTURE 


the flowers are, and how hot it will be in 
about an hour, and will I have an ice.” 

“Where are you dancing?” I asked. 

“At the Waldenechs.” 

“Well, I will promise to show you some 
one who is enthusiastic, if you want,” I said. 

“Who is it?” 

“Reggie Davenport. I’m sure you have 
never seen him, and I’m sure you will agree 
that he is enthusiastic. He has just come 
back from India.” 

“Oh, dear, I suppose he is enthusiastic 
about tigers and punkahs and high tempera- 
tures. I don’t care about that sort of thing at 
all.” 

I rose to go. 

“Well, we shall see. I won’t promise any- 
thing for fear you should be disappointed. 
But he is enthusiastic.” 

Reggie Davenport was my first cousin, and 
I knew him very well, for, having lost both 
my father and mother when I was quite little, 
I had been brought up by my uncle. He was 
only just twenty-two, and was quite the most 
charming and infinitely the most susceptible 
young man I have ever seen. He fell in love 
on an average about once a fortnight. The 
intervals varied a little, but were very seldom 


A DOUBLE OVERTURE 


ii 


longer than this. It was an inconvenient 
habit, because the charming young women 
with whom he fell in love — he never fell in 
love with anyone who was not charming — 
often fell in love with him, and then there 
was trouble. But just at present we were 
leading a peaceful life, for he was engaged to 
one of his periodic raptures, and was to be 
married in six months. The girl was in love 
with him and he was in love with the girl. 
She lived in the country. 

Reggie and I went to the dance that even- 
ing, and later on L,ady Hayes appeared. She 
danced with the Prince, and when he led her 
away at the end, she passed close to where I 
was standing. 

“Well, where is your enthusiast?” she 
asked. 

“He is here somewhere; shall we go and 
find him?” 

She turned to Prince Waldenecli. 

“He has promised to show me an enthusi- 
ast,” she said ; “do you think I shall enjoy it?” 

“I have only met one enthusiast in all my 
life,” said he, “and that one was a missionary. 
He was also quite mad. Do you like mission- 
aries? But there is no missionaries here, as 
far ^s I know.” 


12 


A DOUBLE OVERTURE 


“Oh, Reggie isn’t amissionary,” I said. 

“He has just come back from India,” said 
Lady Hayes. “I am beginning to be 
suspicious, however, come and find him.” 

Lady Hayes took my arm, and we went to 
look for Reggie. She had a habit of looking 
over people’s heads and not noticing any one. 
But Reggie was six feet four, and their eyes 
met. 

Reggie stared until Lady Hayes began to 
laugh, and after a moment she turned to me 
and asked who that pretty boy was. Reggie 
also turned away and asked who the most 
beautiful woman in the world was. 

Then I said, “Reggie, let me introduce you 
to Lady Hayes.” 

And so the great loom clattered and slifted, 
and two more threads were laid side by side 
and woven into the garment of God. If you 
prefer the phrase you may call it a chance 
meeting, but it depends upon what you mean 
by chance. 

I left Reggie still at the dance when I came 
away about two o’clock in the morning, and 
Lady Hayes was still there too. Reggie came 
down to breakfast at half-past ten and 
plunged violently into a confession that was 
more exultant than penitent. 


A DOUBLE OVERTURE 


13 


“And I am going to lunch with her,” he 
finished up. “She’s one of the nicest people 
I ever saw, and the most beautiful. I’m quite 
old friends with her already, and I told her all 
about Gertrude, and she wants to know her. ” 

Lady Hayes had been very nice to Reggie. 
She regarded him as a profitable investment 
which was likely to yield a large percentage 
of amusement. His confession of his young 
love, and the prospective marriage, seemed to 
her the most delightfully fresh and ingenuous 
thing she had ever heard. If the Jinancke was 
as handsome as he they would be a perfect 
couple. 

• Two nights after this I received a note from 
Lady Hayes asking me to dine with her and 
go to the opera afterwards. 

“Your charming young cousin,” she wrote, 
“who is the handsomest boy I ever saw, and 
with whom I have fallen entirely in love, is 
coming too. The opera is Tannhauser . You 
are quite right about him, he is gloriously 
enthusiastic.” 

Reggie was beaming with pleasure as we 
drove off from the house. He was very fond 
of music. 

The overture to Tannhauser is the most 
supreme expression of one of the puzzles of 


H 


A DOUBLE OVERTURE 


life. In half an hour you are presented with 
the purest ideal of human existence and with 
all the subtlest seduction of pure sensuality. 
If that steadfast march of the pilgrims does 
not touch your heart you are lower than the 
beasts that perish; if the horrible loveliness of 
the army of Venus does not stir the devil 
within you, you are more than man. In that 
mystic golden rain of harmony and discord the 
wizard has shown us the bleeding, palpitating 
hearts of Galahad and Messalina, he has 
strung them together on his golden thread, 
and then the artist’s work being over he tosses 
them to us and says, “Choose.” He has 
given us all the factors which make up the 
choice, he has shown us the living essence of 
the two warring principles swiftly and 
unerringly; and as Tannhauser chose of old, so 
“chance” has ordained that each of us shall 
choose, and “chance” ordained that Reggie 
should choose that night. 

We found Lady Hayes alone, looking like 
an incarnation of truth and beauty. She 
welcomed Reggie with evident pleasure, and 
I felt like a chaperone, though I was more 
nearly his age than hers. 

“I am superintending Mr. Davenport’s 
education,” she said, “as he has got no one 


A DOUBLE OVERTURE 


*5 


to do it for him — no one in town at least, and 
he doesn’t know any Wagner. To-night he 
shall eat the apple from the tree of knowledge 
of good and evil — — ’ ’ 

“Which Eve ” I began. 

“On the contrary Augustus Harris offers it 
to him,” she interrupted. “It is very cheap 
even in the stalls, considering how valuable 
it is. ’ ’ 

She laughed charmingly. 

“Have you heard from the real Eve to-day?’ ’ 
she asked Reggie. “She lives in Hereford- 
shire, doesn’t she? There are very good 
apples in Herefordshire, but so there are in 
most places for that matter. ’ ’ 

I looked across at Reggie, and for the first 
time had a sudden feeling of uneasiness. He 
looked terribly in earnest. 

“I have been listening to Reggie’s — you 
told me to call you Reggie, didn’t you? — to 
Reggie’s confessions,” she went on with an 
infernal unconsciousness of power. “He has 
told me when he is going to be married, and I 
am going to give the bride some hints on 
housekeeping; she has to have Reggie’s 
slippers warmed for him by half-past nine, 
because he is always going to be in by ten, 
and — ah! Reggie, don’t be angry, with me, I 


16 A DOUBLE OVERTURE 

talk nonsense only when I am happy, and I am 
very happy now. I look forward to a delight- 
ful evening.” 

Dinner was announced, and she took 
Reggie’s arm, leaving me to follow. There 
was no one else there, and Dady Hayes kept 
up a sort of low monologue, which, taken in 
conjunction with the expression of Reggie’s 
face, was nothing short of diabolical. 

“You have never seen Tannhauser , have 
you, Reggie? Well, it is a little difficult, and 
I will explain it to you. I shall give you the 
core now, and you will eat the apple after- 
wards. Tannhauser goes to Venusberg, you 
know, and stays with Venus. Never go to 
Venusberg, Reggie, or, if you do, take Mrs. 
Reggie with you. I don’t suppose she will 
come and if she won’t, you had much better 
not go at all. It is said to be very unsettling; 
they observe none of the proprieties at Venus- 
berg, and there is no such thing as etiquette; 
you may dance with any one without being 
introduced, and all that sort of thing.” 

L,ady Hayes stopped a moment, and glanced 
at Reggie’s puzzled, half-protesting face. 

“I’m awfully stupid,” he said with refresh- 
ing candor, “and I don’t think I understand 
what you are talking about.” 


A DOUBLE OVERTURE 


1 7 


“You. will understand soon enough when 
you hear the overture,” said she, “and it gets 
easier further on. Let me see, where was I? 
Oh yes, Tannhauser is staying at Venusberg. 
Well, all the time the pilgrims are marching 
about to slow music, and when they come 
near Venusberg, the contrast between the two 
styles is very striking. You are a pilgrim, 
Reggie; domestic bliss is not incompatible 
with sandals.” 

It was horrible. I suppose I uttered some 
angry exclamations, for she turned on me 
sharply. 

“What is the matter?” she asked. “You 
know you will say to-morrow that you have 
been to Tannhauser , and have enjoyed it 
immensely, and you will be quite conscious of 
all I have been saying, so why shouldn't I say 
it? It is very moral, really; of course the 
Venusberg is only an interlude, and we all 
have our interludes, or we should not be 
human. -Tannhauser goes away very soon, 
and gets a pardon from the Pope, and though 
the pardon does not come quite in time, yet it 
is all right; you are certainly meant to feel 
that, and he dies in the odor of sanctity over 
the corpse of his young woman, who of course 
never goes to Venusberg at all.” 


1 8 A DOUBLE OVERTURE 

She paused again, and looked at Reggie. 

“I always think it is just a little hard on 
Venus,” she went on. “You see Tannhauser 
goes away just when she has got fond of him, 
and transfers his affections to Elizabeth, who 
has really nothing in the world to recommend 
her except her voluble piety — she is always 
singing long recitatives to the Virgin — and 
her fine soprano voice. Considering that half 
London always goes to hear Tannhauser 
whenever it is on, it is wonderful to me how 
little sympathy she ever gets. But it is quite 
right, really, not to be sorry for her, she is not 
a nice person, and one shouldn’t consider her 
at all. Ta7inhauser is usually performed on 
Saturday night, and Venus has to be put 
away altogether before eleven o’clock service 
on Sunday morning. You leave her at the 
church door. She wouldn’t go at all well 
with the Litany and the Penitential Psalms — 
in fact one prays to be delivered from her, 
and, poor dear, how they would bore her! 
And when you come out of church again, she 
is gone. She has not gone really, she has 
only gone elsewhere, and she often turns up 
again. And now I’m going to talk sense, 
although I have been talking sense all the 
time, really. Amn’t I a shocking old woman, 


A DOUBLE OVER TUBE 


19 


Reggie? But I have been to Tannhauser 
before.” 

She laughed as an angel might laugh in 
the hallelujah meadow. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, 
rather piteously. ‘ ‘I am awfully stupid, you 
know. ’ ’ 

“It is easy to be incomprehensible,” I gave 
myself the satisfaction of exclaiming. 

“And very unnecessary, is it not?” she 
added, with disarming friendliness. “Yes, 
we won’t talk any more nonsense.” 

Reggie brightened visibly, and confided to 
her that he had tried over the score of parts of 
the opera that afternoon, and could make 
nothing of it. 

“There is a simple arrangement, which you 
can get in most music shops,” said she. 
“Simple arrangements are much the best on 
the whole. It is very easy to be incompre- 
hensible.” 

She rose from her chair and went towards 
the door. “Adam has five minutes to smoke 
a cigarette, before the serpent — I mean the 
brougham — comes round to take him to the 
apple,” she said. “Ring for the coffee; I 
must go to get a shawl. ” 

We arrived at the opera house in good time, 


20 


A DOUBLE OVERTURE 


and had just taken our places when the over- 
ture began. The pilgrim’s march is given 
out first slowly, solemnly, the march of men 
walking steadfastly in perilous places, weary, 
yet undismayed. Then follows that strange 
chromatic passage of transition, without 
which even Wagner dared not show the other 
side of the problem, and then the great con- 
flict between the warring forces begins. The 
great sensual animal began to stir, its heart 
beat with the throbs of returning life, and it 
rose up. The violins shivered and rippled 
and laughed as Venusberg came into sight, 
they rose and fell, gathering strength and ris- 
ing higher with each fall, careless, heedless, 
infinitely beautiful. But below them, not 
less steadfast than before, moved the pilgrims. 

The riot was at its highest, the triumph of 
Venus and her train seemed complete when 
Reggie suddenly got up, and, standing at his 
full height, turned towards Lady Hayes. His 
face was very white and he tried to speak. At 
last the words came: 

“You are a wicked woman,” he said; and 
the moment afterwards the door of the box 
had closed behind him. 

Lady Hayes sat perfectly still for a long 
moment. Then with a sudden passionate 


A DOUBLE OVERTURE 


21 


gesture she sprang up, and took one step 
towards the door of the box. Then she 
stopped and turned round facing the rapidly 
filling house. The blaze of electric light 
shone on the great diamond star in her hair, 
on her tall white figure, on her incomparable 
beauty. 

“He is quite right,” she said. “Ah, God! 
he is quite right.” 

So Tannhauser was performed twice that 
night. 
















ONCE 



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ONCE 


ERTAIN early years of childhood have 



to most of us, though we have perhaps 
become since then middle-aged and quite 
prosaic, an air of mystery, of romance, of 
a vague vastness, that remains to us long 
after we have decided once and for all that we 
are average and common-place individuals. 
It is a difficult question to decide whether 
w r e were happier as children than we are 
now; and we are apt to be biased by the 
obvious palpable happiness that all children 
who are real children, can find in simple 
ordinary things, which are no longer 
sufficient to produce in us any absorbing 
bliss. But if the joys of childhood are 
entirely absorbing, it is equally true that its 
troubles are productive of the same fine order 
of emotion, and the bliss of the first half- 
crown is quite counterbalanced by the blind 


26 


ONCE 


misery of the dentist. Though now a half- 
crown does not convert the whole of life into 
a garden of Sharon, we have our compensa- 
tion in the power to look beyond that hour in 
the dentist’s chair, and to realize that though 
our immediate horizon is black with clouds, tea- 
time will come as usual at five o’clock, and 
that the visit to the dentist will be numbered 
with the dead joys and sorrows of this uncer- 
tain world. 

The explanation is simple enough ; a child 
lives wholly in the present moment, whether it 
is sweet or bitter, while the ordinary adult can 
conceive a future, and can dwell in the past. 
Moreover, by whatever names we may call 
ourselves, whether we are pessimists or the 
“morbid fin de siecle outcome of a disillusioned 
and over cultivated civilization” — it is easy 
enough to find sufficiently bad names for the 
most modern of our race — the fact remains, 
that however flat and stale the present appears 
to us, however uninteresting the future, we still 
look with something of longing and regret on 
our own past years. We forget all that was 
unpleasant, pessimists though we be, and to 
us now, childhood was a long sunny day, 
without any lessons to do, and full of strange, 
lovely mysteries. I remember being promised 


ONCE 


27 


by an elder brother in return for some small 
service, a purple box with stars upon it, that 
was in a wood. I do not think that the purple 
box ever existed ; certainly I never got it, yet I 
used to lie awake at night thinking of it, and 
wondering when it would come; whereas 
what I do not remember is the period when 
the advent of the purple box passed in my 
mind from being imminent to being remote, 
and the first moment when I realized that it 
was not going to come at all. That the 
moment was bitter I do not doubt, but that I 
have forgotten; what does remain with me, is 
the mystery and the joy that hung round the 
purple box which I have never yet set eyes 
on. 

When I was eight years old, we moved from 
a midland county town into a house near 
Truro, deep in the rural heart of Cornwall. 
I think I shall never forget the first sight of 
primroses growing wild in the lanes. We 
had arrived at the house late one night, and 
after the long journey, we children were put 
to bed at once. But I awoke early the next 
morning, and saw in my room a light that 
was altogether unfamiliar to me, and which I 
thought then and think still, is one of the most 
lovely things in the world. It is the light 


28 


ONCE 


which comes from the level rays of the sun, 
when they shine through fresh green leaves. 
You may see it on most days of the year, if you 
care to look for it; whether you seek it at 
morning or evening in some little hollow 
fringed by tender beech trees, or loveliest of 
all, where young elms and ashes lean and 
listen together over a brook which makes its 
valley melodious, or whether you see it, as I 
saw it now for the first time, reflected on to the 
whitewashed ceiling of a small bedroom. It 
is an aqueous quivering light, full of tender 
shifting shadows and dim tranquility, too 
delicate for words. Child as I was, I felt 
something of its spell, and dressed quickly 
and went out, and at that moment realized 
consciously for the first time something of 
what a spring morning is always ready to tell 
us, if we will only stand quiet and listen to 
its message. 

It was just half-past six, and from where I 
stood at the front door, I looked over a long 
deep Cornish valley stretching away to the 
east and lost in morning. Thin skeins of fine 
cloud still lingered on the lower slopes of the 
hills, and in the center of the valley the dim 
forms of houses, and the steeples of the Truro 
churches pricked the mist. The fields that 


ONCE 


29 


sloped gently away from my feet were shining 
with the early May dew; to the right stretched 
a mossy bird-haunted lawn, and in the air 
there was a keen scent of morning, that inde- 
scribable suggestion of something too ethereal 
to call fragrance, and which seems only the 
smell of pure and complete cleanliness. 

I followed a little path that led to a small 
copse, and there in the hedge — I could show 
you the place to this day — I saw for the first 
time a clump of wild primroses. I had never 
heard of kinnseus and the gorse, and I think 
it would have seemed to me rather profane to 
introduce primroses into my prayers, but I 
certainly felt that life would be something 
quite different ever afterwards. 

The next days were full of beautiful sur- 
prises. Hens really did lay eggs in totally 
unexpected places, and on the second evening 
I found one in a hawthorn hedge. Cows were 
milked visibly, and the milk was good to 
drink. There was a hay-rick with a little 
niche in it, where one could lie in fragrant 
seclusion, and watch the mysteries of poultry 
life. Best of all there was a hedge-sparrow’s 
nest, in which one morning there appeared 
what might have been a piece of blue sky. 
Hater there were four half-naked little forms, 


30 


ONCE 


with veiled eyes and open mouths, which by 
degrees grew feathered and timid, and stared 
at me with apprehension. It was all strange 
and new and beautiful. 

Near the hay-rick was a creviced wall, the 
home of tiny spiral snail shells, who lived 
in a wide forest of moss and lichen, and went 
out walking to see their friends on damp 
evenings. 

We soon started a. collection of these, and 
looked out their names in a green conchologi- 
cal manual, which described them as 
“minute shells.” This was taken to be a 
compound substantive, evidently constructed 
on the same principle as the word hour- 
glass. 

About a week after we came to live in this 
new earth, I remember a great gale, which 
raged for two or three days, and on the 
second morning I was standing at the window 
of the nursery which looked towards the 
north, and heard during a temporary lull, a 
low rhythmical thunder, the sound of which 
for some reason frightened me, and I was 
told it was the sound of the Atlantic waves 
seven miles away. That morning a great 
elm-tree was blown down, and I ran out, hop- 
ing to find something new and wonderful 


ONCE 


3i 


among the leaves at the top of the tree, now 
placed unexpectedly within my reach. I was 
just turning away disappointed, for the top- 
most branch seemed to be like any other 
branch, when I caught sight of a piece of blue 
mottled eggshell on the ground, and lying 
near it a little unfledged rook, dead and 
crushed. 

The gardener said it was a pity it was so 
young, for a few more weeks would have 
qualified it for a rook pie. I thought it 
extremely unfeeling of him, and we buried the 
little body that afternoon with much cere- 
mony in the shrubbery, and over its grave 
put a cross, formed of two hazel-twigs, and 
came into tea with the feeling that we had 
done something very pious, and that it was 
rather like Sunday. At the same time I 
felt that we had had a perfectly charming 
time, and next morning I searched carefully 
round the neighborhood of the fallen tree 
hoping to find another dead rook, or indeed 
anything capable of receiving decent and 
Christian burial. 

These things are trifles, are they not? I 
found a dead rabbit here in the woods yester- 
day, and I did not get an empty box of Pears’ 
soap, and dig its grave under the cedar tree. 


32 


ONCE 


It would have been quite ridiculous. Yet I 
thought that I would like to feel once more 
the childish instinct that made me bury the 
young rook that had rocked securely in the 
nest to the soft breeze, till that morning, when 
a blind gust overturned its home and its world. 
We have learnt so much since these dim 
childish days, and yet after all, we are so little 
wiser: the mysteries of childhood have ceased 
to interest us, but not because we have found 
the key to them. The mystery is there in all its 
old beauty; it is we who have changed; we can 
calculate the force per square inch of the wind 
that lays our elm trees low, and the young 
dead rook may lie and rot. The gardener 
was quite right; it was a pity it did not live 
to qualify for a rook pie. That would have 
been far more useful. Yet I remember the 
burial of that young rook under the white 
flowering laurustinus more keenly than I 
remember any rook pie. The moral is that 
there are at least two ways of looking at 
everything, and which is the better, who 
shall say? 

The next great joy was the aquarium. 
Measured by the limitations of actual space 
and cubic contents, the capacities of the 
aquarium were not large, for it was only a brown 


ONCE 


33 


earthen-ware bowl with a diameter of about 
eighteen inches; but its potentialities were 
infinite. We had even dim ideas of rearing a 
salmon parr in it. 

The happy hunting ground, from which 
the treasures of the aquarium were drawn, was 
a little stream that ran swiftly over gravelly 
soil about half-a-mile from our house. On 
each side of it stretched low lying water 
meadows, rich with rag-wort and meadow- 
sweet, among which one day we found a lark’s 
nest. Every now and then the stream spread 
out into shallow tranquil pools, overhung by 
thick angular hawthorns. Sticklebacks made 
their nests under the banks; small trout 
flashed through the clear shallows, and the 
caddice-worms collected the small twigs which 
fell from the trees, and made of them the 
rafters of their houses. 

It was by such pools as these that we spent 
hours dabbling in the stream and filling small 
tin cans with water snails and caddices, for 
subsequent transference to the aquarium : here, 
too, we watched for the salmon parr, which 
did not exist, and laid dark plots against the 
little trout, which treated them with severe 
disdain, and here one evening we caught a 
stickleback. It was my sister’s doing, but I 


34 


ONCE 


considered then, and consider still, that the 
credit was as much mine as hers. 

It was this way: she had been poking our 
net as usual among the debris that lay in the 
backwater of the pool, and had found four 
caddices and two water snails, one of which 
was a new sort. She had just said “That’s 
all,” and was preparing to throw the rest back 
into the stream, when I saw something move 
at the bottom of the net, and there among 
the dead leaves and twigs lay a live stickle- 
back. That night, the aquarium, which 
usually lived in an empty coach house, was 
moved solemnly up to the nursery. The idea of 
Gray’s cat and the gold fish was too strong 
for us; besides, if the cat did get at our stickle- 
back, the aquarium would not be deep enough 
to drown it; and in any case the nervous 
shock to the stickleback might be fatal. 

The week that followed was the balmiest 
period the aquarium, ever knew. One morn- 
ing, as we were watching the stickleback, a 
small gauzy being crawled up from the water 
and rested on the edge of the bowl. There 
was a bright sun shining, and in a moment or 
two his water-logged wings grew rapidly firm 
and iridescent, he fanned them up and down, 
and they became larger and more wonderful 


ONCE 


35 


under our very eyes All well, it was only 

a caddice-worin turning into a fly. Such 
things happen very often. 

The aquarium was paved with pieces of spa 
which we had picked up at Torquay the year 
before, and bright smooth sea pebbles. I am 
afraid the caddices would have preferred a lit- 
tle wholesome mud, but that was not to be 
thought of. Round the edge crept the water 
snails, and the caddice- worms hid among the 
spa and pebbles, and walked over each other, 
with a fine disregard of the laws of politeness. 
But the king of our water world was the 
stickleback: it is a very common fish, but to 
us there was only one, and that one was ours. 

Every other day the aquarium used to be 
emptied out and fresh water was put in. This 
operation required some delicacy of handling. 
The water was strained through a very nar- 
row piece of netting into the little drain out- 
side the coach-house. Snails, caddice- worms, 
and stickleback were caught in the netting, 
and instantly placed in a temporary hotel, in 
the shape of an old washing basin, filled with 
water. Two tadpoles, which also belong to 
this period, used to cause us some uneasiness 
at such times. They would hide among the 
spa, at the bottom of the aquarium, at the 


36 


ONCE 


imminent risk of being crushed as it was tilted 
up; besides this, the stickleback used to make 
short runs at them, and they did not get on 
at all well together. What we were to do 
when they became frogs, was a momentous 
question. If I had known French, I should 
have expressed my feelings about them by 
saying that they would be likely to have become 
d£class£s by living with our stickleback in a 
palace of spa: as it was, I simply felt that it 
would be unsuitable to turn them back into 
the somewhat dirty pool from which they 
came, but that the inpropriety of their con- 
tinuing to live as frogs with the stickleback 
and the caddice-worms was more glaring still. 
They were decidedly of a different class; as 
long as they were tadpoles it did not matter; 
all classes meet as children. Again, they 
would soon be several sizes too large for the 
aquarium, and as our nurse said, they would 
be “ all over.” 

It was during one of these cleanings out 
that the great catastrophe happened. The 
stickleback, according to custom, was swim- 
ming fiercely and defiantly round the sinking 
water in the aquarium. He would always do 
this till there was scarcely any left, then make 
a sudden rush against the netting and try to 


ONCE 


37 


swim through it, a feat which he never accom- 
plished, but which he never perceived was 
impossible. How it happened I do not quite 
know, something caused me to let the water 
out less discreetly than usual; the last pint 
came with a sudden rush, and my, sister, who 
was holding the netting, dropped one corner 
of it. At this moment the stickleback 
charged, and for once passed the netting, and 
the next moment the flow of water had carried 
him down the drain. 

For a space we sat silent, and then my sis- 
ter said, with a curious tone in her voice 
which I had never heard before, but which I 
now associate with other griefs which we have 
been through together, “ It is gone.” 

We silently placed the netting with the 
caddice-worms and water snails in the basin, 
and extracted the tadpoles from the spa. We 
had not got the heart to arrange and clean 
out the aquarium, and it lay there empty, 
with the spa and pebbles scattered over the 
cobbled yard. 

L,ater in the morning we came back again 
and arranged it as usual. As our heads were 
bent together over it, while we placed the 
pebbles at the bottom, I saw two large tears 
roll from her eyes on to the red earthenware 


38 


ONCE 


rim of the bowl, and when we had finished, 
we both looked at the little drain-hole where 
the stickleback had vanished, and our eyes 
met. We had not spoken about it siilce she 
said “ It is gone.” 

“I am so sorry,” she whispered, “oh, why 
did I let go of the net ?’ ’ and another tear ran 
down her cheek. 

“Don’t mind so much,” I said, “it was 
more my fault than yours. Something 
jogged my elbow.” 

But we never caught another stickleback. 


AUTUMN AND LOVE 

t 















AUTUMN AND LOVE 



‘HERE is a day, I had almost said a 


moment, in every year when summer 
definitely stops. It dies a sudden death, and 
we seldom notice that the end is near, until it 
has come. This year it was even more sud- 
den than usual. It occurred yesterday even- 
ing, while I was sitting out on the lawn 
below the terrace walk reading the account cf 
the horrible scenes in Hamburg during the 
cholera there. A strange little wind swept 
across the still air, and a rose-leaf from the 
great climbing creeper fluttered down on to 
the page, and at that moment summer 
stopped 

I awoke this morning from a deep dreamless 
sleep, which, with a strange mixture of cruelty 
and kindness, often follows on some great 
sorrow. It is no doubt a relief to lose, though 


42 


AUTUMN AND LOVE 


only for a few hours, the sense of suffering, 
yet when we wake, we find that sleep has 
brought us a doubtful gift, for it has only 
quickened our capabilities for suffering. The 
first few moments of conscious thought are 
often the slow involuntary gathering up of 
the threads of our interrupted sensations, and 
it was with a vague reminiscence of some 
change which had taken place, that I began to 
piece together the events of the preceding 
evening. An old servant had come in late 
the night before to tell me that his little 
daughter, who had been slowly dying of con- 
sumption for months past, was just dead. He 
felt it to be a release, but that did not make it 
less sad: if she was only to have so few sum- 
mers here, they might at least have been more 
full of that unthinking receptive happiness, 
which is the birthright of children, but which 
so few retain beyond childhood. He had 
asked me to come in and see the poor little 
face once more. “She looks so happy and 
peaceful,” he said, with that strange unreserve 
that many poor people have about death, 1 ‘her 
arms are lying just as they were when she 
died, she had crossed them on her breast, as 
she used to do when she was saying her 
prayers to her mother. I could fancy that she 


AUTUMN AND LOVE 


43 


had been saying them, and had fallen asleep 
so.” 

The poor fellow evidently found a vague 
consolation in this. Death, which so closely 
resembled life, was partly robbed of its horror 
for him. It is a merciful arrangement. 

There had been a slight frost in the night, 
the first of the year, and from the little chest- 
nut tree in front of my windows unseen hands 
were stripping off the yellow leaves. There is 
something ironical in this yearly death of 
vegetation, which makes the fall of the leaves 
doubly dreadful to us, to whom, when autumn 
comes, no spring will bring a renewal of life. I 
had half hoped last night that I had been 
wrong about the death of the summer, the air 
was so mild, and the wind stirred so softly in 
the shrubbery, but this morning it is no 
longer possible to doubt; the freshness of the 
air cannot be mistaken for the coolness of a 
summer morning, it is the forerunner of cold 
and mist and long dark evenings. 

After breakfast I went down to the old 
man’s cottage. The dead girl had been his 
only daughter; she was the child of old age, 
and nothing was left him now. By a former 
marriage he had one son, who had died in 
infancy, and his second wife had died in giv- 


44 


AUTUMN AND LOVE 


ing birth to this daughter. Ifife and death 
often walk hand in hand, and when we clasp 
the hand of life, we cannot but feel that we 
accept death as part of our union. 

The father asked me to go in to see the dead 
child’s face; it was wonderfully dignified 
with the dignity that only can come to com- 
plete tranquility; and Hb then took me back 
to his little front room and told me the sad- 
dest story I have ever heard. 

“I was sitting,” he said, u late last night in 
the room where she is lying, and I had gone 
to sleep, for I was very tired with the watch- 
ing and the short nights. I had left the door 
ajar I suppose; for I was awakened by a 
scratching sound, and soon I saw her little 
dog, Tiny she called him, pushing through 
the crack. I was tired and weary, and I sat 
still and watched him. He put his two paws 
on the bed and tried to lick her hand, but it 
was out of his reach. And he whined as dogs 
do, when they want to attract their master’s 
attention, and gave a little short bark. Then 
he got down on to the floor again, and sat up 
to beg, as she had taught him to do. He used 
to dislike it, and she often had trouble to 
make him do it, when she wanted him to 
show off to strangers and suchlike. But he 


AUTUMN AND LOVE 


45 


couldn’t understand, I expect, why she took 
no notice of him, and he wanted to make her 
attend to him.” 

He paused a moment, seeming half 
uncertain whether I wanted to hear him 
go on. 

“It’s nothing in the telling, ’ ’ he said, “but 
it went to my heart to see the dog do so. He 
seemed to wonder why she didn’t speak to 
him. There was one other trick he used to 
do when he was younger, but I reckon he is 
getting old like the rest of us, and his joints 
are a bit stiff. He would turn head oyer his 
heels for all the world like a clown you see at 
the circus, but it must be a year or more since 
she tried to make him do it, for she saw it 
hurt him. 

“ But I reckon he couldn’t understand how 
it was she took no notice of him, for she had 
always petted him, and given him a bit of 
biscuit or something when he did his tricks 
well, his lessons, she used to call them, poor 
lamb! though it seemed to me he cared more 
for her attention than a bit of biscuit: so what 
should the dog do, but try to turn head over 
heels, as he hadn’t done for a year and more. 
But he was too stiff, and he fell over. He 
wagged his tail, and looked up at the bed, as 


4 6 


A UTUMN AND LOVE 


if he should say he’d tried his best, and when 
he saw she didn’t notice him, he gave a whine 
like a thing in pain, and lay down by the bed. 
But he couldn’t rest, but he must keep jump- 
ing up and trying to get up on to the bed, 
until I took him down with me and gave him 
his supper. But he wouldn’t so much as look 
at it, and this morning when I came down- 
stairs, he was lying at the door, instead of in 
his basket in the kitchen. And when I went 
to him, I found he was quite dead. I reckon 
he was getting old, and he didn’t feel to care 
for anything no more now she wasn’t there to 
pet him and tease him.” 

The old man sat silent for a minute or two, 
looking into the fire in dry-eyed sorrow. The 
old do not shed tears very easily; they have 
learnt that it does no good. But in a few 
minutes the blessed relief came, and he sobbed 
like a little child. 

“It seemed to bring it home to me that she 
was dead,” he said, “when I saw her not tak- 
ing any notice of her Tiny. ’ ’ 

The horror of utter helplessness was upon 
me. The unfathomable mystery of death 
never seemed to me before to so utterly defy 
scrutiny. I tried to make him feel that 
though I could offer him no consolation, I 


AUTUMN AND LOVE 


47 


wished to share his sorrow, and he talked on 
for an hour or so. 

The sun was warm as I walked back, and 
the rime frost had completely disappeared. 
But the cruel glory of the dying woodland 
was there in all its thoughtless splendor; like 
some great lady, whose beauty has shown for 
a short hour or two in some dark hovel, where 
a servant or friend lies dying, the splendid 
trees mock us with their yearly renewal of 
loveliness, and when they pass from us in the 
autumn, we know that their glory will shine 
on in years to come, while we are left in the 
dark house, with the coffin and the pall and 
all the grim apparatus of death. 

It is evening again, and as I sit by the open 
window, the faint sweet smells from the glim- 
mering flower beds are wafted in with the 
sighing of the wind. This long melancholy 
day is drawing to a close, and everything is 
lying hushed beneath the benediction of even- 
ing. The same strange little wind that woke 
in the bushes last night, again stirs in the 
dusk, and strikes a sudden shiver in the still 
evening air. The birds call to each other in 
the shrubbery with low flute-like notes, and 
hymnd-by a great yellow moon swings into 
sight. White winged moths hover noiselessly 


48 


AUTUMN AND LOVE 


over the dim flowers, and pass away out of 
sight among the dark masses of the trees. 
One can almost believe in the possibility of 
peace on such a night as this, a burning brain 
and an aching heart seem almost a desecra- 
tion; yet in that cottage beyond the dark 
meadow below, in the window of which there 
has just now sprung up a faint tiny light, 
there lies a dead child, and in the garden 
there is a small newly turned piece of turf, 
and under it sleeps a dumb dog, who could 
not make his mistress hear or see his little 
attempts to please her, and into whose soul 
such dim mysterious anguish entered that he 
could not live without her. I cannot but 
wonder and doubt whether there is anything 
in the world so strong as that necessity that 
made him die with her, and which we call 
love. If so, there is hope even in this still 
autumn evening, the absolute peace of which 
is so full of the presage of death. 


TWO DAYS AFTER 














J 














TWO DAYS AFTER 


T WO days have passed, and this afternoon 
they are going to bury the child of 
whose death I have just told you. Old Ellis 
came here yesterday, and asked me, ever so 
timidly, whether I would go with him to the 
funeral, if it was not too much to ask. 

He expected, he said, a sister of his who 
lived some ten miles away, the aunt of the 
dead child, but there would be no one else. 
He scarcely liked to ask me, but I had known 
his daughter, and she had always been so 
pleased when I had come to see her. So, if I 
would do one thing more — it was pitiful to 
hear him. 

I arrived at the cottage about two o’clock. 
I ordered the carriage to wait, because I 
thought he might like to go in it to the church 
yard. But he would not — he wished to fol- 
low her more closely; he would not leave her 


52 


TWO DA YS AFTER 


while she was above ground. It was nearly a 
mile to the church, and I told the coachman 
to follow us at some distance; I knew he 
could not manage to walk both ways, for he 
was very old. 

The blinds were all drawn down, and at 
the end of the little passage, there stood the 
coffin, on a dismal-looking truck, round which 
hovered two men in black. The old man 
met me at the door, and we went into the 
room, where his sister was sitting. She was 
a tall, angular woman, and she was eating 
seedcake and drinking sherry with mournful 
alacrity. She stood up when I entered, and 
made a stiff courtesy to me. 

The old man sat in the window, with his 
hands crossed on his knees, looking out over 
the fields with tired, tearless eyes. I talked 
quietly to him and his sister for a few minutes, 
until a knock came at the door, and the 
undertaker looked in. 

Ellis got up from his seat. 

“It’s time we were off, sir,” he said. 

“Ah, poor lamb,” said his sister, opening 
and shutting her mouth, as if it was worked 
with a steel snap. 

I had brought with me a wreath of hot- 
house flowers, which I laid on the coffin as it 


TWO DA YS AFTER 


53 


was being wheeled out. Ellis turned round 
to me, as I placed them there, and he tried to 
speak, but it was too much for him, when he 
thought that all that had been dearest to him 
was leaving the house for ever, and the bitter 
dryness of his eyes was flooded. 

“We will wait a few minutes,” I said. 
“Come back here in to the room. Ah, my 
old friend, I wish I could tell you what I feel 
for you, but you know it, do you not? Yes, 
yes. ’ ’ 

In a few minutes he was quiet again, and 
grasped my hand. 

“I take it very kind of you, sir,” he 
said, “to think so much of my poor little 
lamb; very kind indeed. God bless you for 
that.” 

The coffin was waiting by the little garden 
gate, and we joined his sister again, who had 
remained in the passage. As soon as we got 
outside the house, she drew a large handker- 
chief, made of some very stiff material from 
her pocket, and held it in front of her nose 
and mouth all the way to the churchyard. In 
the other hand she carried a little glass case 
of white artificial flowers, bought with money 
that I am sure she could ill-afford, to place on 
the grave. 


54 


TWO DA VS AFTER 


I wonder if there is anyone, of whatever 
religion or belief, who has heard our English 
burial service said over one they loved, with- 
out feeling strengthened and comforted by its 
strong security, its patient hope. Poor old 
Ellis, I know, looked up at the sound of the 
grave voice, which met us at the gate of 
the churchyard, and walked more firmly and 
steadily. In some dim unformulated way he 
felt that the issues of life and death were in 
other hands, and in those hands he was con- 
tent to leave them. 

“They are only words,” you say, 4 ‘what 
words are of value when all love has gone?’ ’ 

So be it; but there are those, perhaps the 
simplest and best among us, who do value 
them. Would you take their comfort from 
them, for they are in sore need. 

The service was soon over, and even as we 
left the grave, a cold drizzle of rain began. 
The poor people in this village think that it 
is a good thing if it rains directly after they 
have buried some one. They say that the 
sky is weeping for them. That is a beautiful 
belief, is it not? 

The carriage was waiting at the gate into 
the churchyard, but just as the old man was 
stepping into it, he looked back again at the 


two da ys After 


55 


little open grave, which the sexton had already- 
begun to fill in. 

“I must go back, sir, just for a minute,” he 
said, and with a curious stumbling run, he 
made his way over the little mounds, between 
the white headstones to where he had left his 
dear child, and by the side of the grave he 
knelt down, and remained there for a minute 
or two, with the cold showers beating on to 
his grey, uncovered head. I was suddenly 
afraid, and went quickly but silently to his 
side. He saw me, but did not rise from his 
knees. He was looking earnestly into that 
horrible cold pit, and his lips moved silently. 
Then half audibly he whispered : 

‘ ‘Good-bye, dear lamb, dear lamb.” 

Then he turned to me. 

“I have kept you waiting, sir, I am afraid,” 
he said. “I just came back to say good-bye 
to her once more, and to repeat for her the 
prayer we have always said together of an 
evening. I will come now. ’ ’ 

His sister was sitting in the carriage, with 
her handkerchief in the same discreet position, 
and we drove back together to his house. 

This evening he sits there alone. His sister 
had to go back to her home, for she could not 
leave the children, and made her departure in 


56 


TWO DAYS AFTER 


an old farm cart, drawn by a shaggy pony, 
observing the proprieties to the last, and soon 
afterwards I left him. He wished, I think, to 
be alone, and get more used to his sorrow. 

Ah, what does it all mean? What is the 
reason of this weary world? Do you know 
Heine’s “Old play”? 

“She was loveable, and he loved her, but 
he was not loveable and she did not love 
him.” 

The deadly tune of the song of the unwept 
tear, when one woman alone did not weep, he 
says is sung in hell. But we are not in hell, 
we are on this earth, but to day when I think 
of the old man sitting alone in his cottage, and 
another sleeping in God’s acre, once more a 
deadly tune is sung, which I think, is not less 
sad than Heine’s. 

“She was loveable, and he loved her; he 
was loveable, and she loved him. ’ ’ 

This song has nothing to do with Heine’s 
hero, who can still be glad that he is alive. 
These are not sighs of hopeless passion, they 
are not young vows breathed to one who will 
not listen; this is only the sorrow of a very 
old man who loved a little daughter, who 
in turn loved him, and it is all over; he is 
unhappy, but she has ceased to suffer; at that 


TWO DA YS AFTER 


57 


he is glad; and' now he sits alone, and will sit 
alone till he has ceased to suffer too. Such 
things are very common. 

It is a good thing, is it not, that he is very 
old; he will have less long to suffer. But it 
is strange to be glad that Death is probably 
not far off. 

This old man wanted so little, yet he had 
scarcely enough; only enough for two to live 
on somewhat sparingly, and very frugally. 
Now he has enough; there will be no more 
doctor’s bills; no more nursing expenses. 
But it was very pitiful to hear him say “Good- 
bye, dear lamb, dear lamb,” after he had 
prayed with her for the last time. 

This little story, I imagine, will touch very 
few, fewer, perhaps, than will feel the sadness 
of the death of this little girl’s dog. So many 
want a little more subtleness in sorrow than 
truth can always give them. The sorrow of a 
dumb thing is more bizarre, more out of the 
way; the sorrow of an old man is so common, 
and old men are less attractive than intelligent 
dogs. Thus many people, I expect, will pass 
this story over for precisely these reasons, 
which led me to write it. 































































* 























































CARRINGTON 














CARRINGTON 


T HERE is a beauty in old faces, which the 
young, for all their insolent abundance 
of loveliness cannot rival, which is the result 
of having accepted old age, and the circum- 
stances attendant on it, of being able, mentally 
speaking, to sit down contentedly, instead of 
walking or trying to run, and of enjoying 
peace of mind without the effort of attaining it. 

Mrs. Carrington was sitting in her house- 
keeper’s room at Langley, with her hands 
crossed before her on her lap, looking into the 
fire. She must always have been beautiful, 
but old age had added to her face the quality 
I have tried to describe above, and which 
always seems to me to be, in a way, the crown- 
ing grace of beauty. She had in her eyes that 
indwelling look which the old have when they 
are happiest, and she was very happy. She 
had seen two generations of Davenports grow 


62 


CARRINGTON 


up at her knee, and she had felt absolutely 
widowed when her latest, her Benjamin of 
babies, had flown. Reggie had always been 
much more dependent on her than any of 
the others; he had been weak and sickly till 
he was ten, and after a year at school, which 
it is hoped would have put more grit into him, 
he had been ordered abroad by the doctors 
for two years, and he was due home again 
to-night. The carriage had started for the sta- 
tion an hour ago, and Carrington’s eyes had 
followed it till it was out of sight, and she 
had then sat down by the fire, too happily 
expectant to take her sewing up, or do any- 
thing more than sit and wait quietly for the 
fulfillment of her happiness. 

Round her room was all that was dear to 
her; small presents which the children had 
made her from time to time, little records of 
her own even, uneventful years. The old 
nursery tea-things were set out on the table, 
which though they had dwindled down to two 
teacups, one with a broken handle, and four 
plates, were more than sufficient for Carring- 
ton’s present purpose. “Eh, he’ll be cold and 
hungry when he comes in,” she had said to 
herself, ‘ ‘the tea will be over in the drawing- 
room; he shall have it up here with me.” 


CA RRING T ON 


63 


The silence which had been broken only by 
the lapping tongues of the flames as they 
licked the bars of the grate, began to be grad- 
ually overscored by the faint rumbling of car- 
riage wheels. Carrington smiled to herself as 
if a pleasant thought had also overscored the 
vague, happy music of her mind, and set the 
kettle back on the hob. In a moment or two 
the contented song began again, and she poured 
the hissing water into the teapot. The wheels 
were more audible now, and the frosty ring of 
the horse’s hoofs could be heard like a triplet 
passage across ground bass. She left her 
room with a smile on her old lips, and went 
gently through the swing-door that led to the 
top of the stairs. Here, for some reason scarcely 
known even to herself, she paused. Hitherto 
she had always been the first to welcome 
him in his home-comings, waiting in the hall 
for the door to be opened, or opening it her- 
self. But now, for some cause, she stopped 
at the head of the stairs. She heard the front 
door open, but she could not see it, as the 
banisters over which she was leaning were 
just above it; then a “Hullo, Wilkins,” the 
rattle of a stick on the table, and the small 
thump of a hat on the floor, and a light curly 
head crossed the hall below. He had gone 


6 4 


CA RRING T ON 


into the drawing-room ; through the door, 
before it closed, there was borne to her the mur- 
mur of pleasant, welcoming voices, and then 
all was silent again. A few minutes after- 
wards a footman came upstairs carrying a 
portmanteau, and she heard the subdued sound 
of a bell ringing distantly. The butler reap- 
peared, and went into the drawing-room, passed 
out again, and again came across with a tea- 
tray in his hands, on which was a silver tea- 
pot, a few plates of bread and butter and cake, 
and one teacup. 

Somehow she felt unreasonably disappointed, 
she had expected something very different. 
She had so often pictured to herself, his 
return as she would wish it to be. A brief 
visit to the drawing-room — a demand for tea 
— an announcement that it had been already 
sent away — an eager proposal that he should 
have it upstairs with her — all this was so 
common in her thoughts that any viola- 
tion of it seemed, quite illogically, a cruel 
privation. 

Carrington went slowly back to her room, 
took the kettle off the hob, and placed it in 
the grate. There was already enough tea 
made for one. Her eyes had lost their quiet 
happy light, and she poured out a cup of tea 


CARRING T ON 


65 


with a rather uncertain hand. She had been 
at pains to get a couple of buns with pink 
sugar on the top from the stillroom, but she 
did not eat those: they had been consecrated, 
as it were, already, to some one else. 

Instead of sitting by the fire, and feeding on 
her own thoughts, she took up a piece of plain 
sewing and worked steadily at it. Her tea 
stood un tasted. 

Reggie Davenport was a particularly nice 
boy, with a special fondness for helpless 
things, like kittens and ugly half-fledged birds, 
and old people. His emotions took the form 
of impulses, and he was entirely thoughtless, 
which, on the whole, is better at that age, than 
being thoughtful, and possible priggish. 

He went into the drawing-room in the first 
instance, because it was entirely natural and 
laudable in him to wish to see his mother, 
and he stayed there because he was asked 
a great many questions, which he enjoyed 
answering. He talked about kangaroos and 
rattlesnakes, and how awfully sick he was on 
the Indian Ocean, and how beastly ugly all 
niggers were. 

Meanwhile Carrington was sitting by her 
fire, feeling that her last chick was further 
from her perhaps than she had ever imagined 


66 


CARRINGTON 


him to be when he was in Australia, and 
that her eyes were too dim even to do her 
plain sewing. 

She waited and waited, but there was no 
sign. Once she went to the top of the stairs and 
listened. Laughter and pleasant voices came to 
her in muffled tones from behind the closed 
door. She crept back to her room; the fire 
was nearly out and it was chilly and uncom- 
fortable. She went to the window and drew 
down the blind which she had raised two 
hours before, in order to watch the lamps of 
the carriage, as it went to the station to bring 
him home. Not caring to light the fire again, 
she wrapped a shawl round her, and took up 
her sewing. She was never idle, except when 
she was very happy. 

After a time the dressing-bell rang, surely 
he would come now if only for a minute. 
But the clock went ticking inexorably on, 
twenty minutes to eight, a quarter to, ten 
minutes to. Then there came a burst of 
laughter, in which a half treble and entirely 
boyish voice predominated. Some one came 
rushing upstairs three steps at a time, and the 
door at the top of the staircase banged. 

Carrington’s room opened into a small cross 
passage, intersected by the main passage from 


CARRINGTON 


67 


the head of the stairs. When she heard the 
door bang, she rose gently from her chair and 
stood by her half- opened door. The steps 
came quickly along the main passage, and 
across the square of intersection passed a slim 
young figure. He neither stop nor turned his 
head, but went quickly on to his room, and 
she heard the door shut behind him. Her 
two wrinkled old hands made a sudden move- 
ment towards each other, and then fell limply 
again to her side. Never had mistress waited 
for her lover more faithfully than she, and 
this was all — a light elastic step and an 
unturned head. 

Her disappointment was that of dumb 
unreasoning animals, or of children, or of the 
old. They are the same in kind, for animals 
and children cannot reason, and the old do 
not. Disappointment comes, and it is there. 
She did not consider that his first thought 
was naturally for his mother and father, that 
it was an axiom that he should stay talking 
to them, until he would certainly be late for 
dinner, unless he ran upstairs three steps at a 
time, and banged the door of his room behind 
him. And this unreasoning suffering is more 
pathetic than any other: it lives only in the 
present bitter moment. Yet what was it 


68 


CARRINGTON 


after all ? Simply that a boy of thirteen did 
not go to see his old nurse during the first 
hour that he was in the house. 

But her desire would not be denied. She 
went softly up to his door and tapped. From 
within there came a sound exactly as if some- 
one was kicking off a pair of boots She 
tapped again. 

“ Hullo, who’s that ? ” 

“Eh? it’s only me,” said Carrington, 
turning the handle. 

“ Oh, you can’t come in,” in hurried tones. 
“ I’m half undressed. Wait a minute.” 

A hand was cautiously thrust round the 
door, innocent of any sign of shirt cuff about 
the wrist. 

Carrington’s two wrinkled old hands closed 
upon the soft smooth fingers, and she did not 
trust herself to speak. 

“How are you, Carry?” asked a cheerful 
voice, “I nearly came up to have tea with 
you, only Ma wanted me to stop. I must go 
on dressing now, or I shall be late. I shall 
come up to see you when I go to bed.” 

Carrington went back to her room, with 
her hunger only partly filled. It was differ- 
ent to what she had expected somehow. But 
she had heard him kick off his boots, she had 


CA RRING T ON 69 

touched his hand, and nothing could deprive 
her of that. 

Reggie ate a remarkably good dinner, and 
felt hugely sleepy afterwards. He went up 
to his room to get some “ rum things,” as he 
called them, which he had bought at various 
places, and his bed looked so extremely 
inviting that he put his candle down on his 
dressing table and lay down, intending to go 
back to the drawing-room in a minute or two. 
A quarter of an hour after this, Carrington 
came upstairs beaming with anticipation. She 
trotted backwards and forwards from the 
house-maid’s cupboard to her fire-place and 
laid the fire again. In a few minutes the 
clieerfullest of blazes was crackling on the 
hearth. She had not thought it worth while 
to light her fire when it went out before, but 
this was altogether a different matter. She 
swept the old ashes neatly under the grate, 
drew two chairs up close, and went to wash 
her hands. The most precious of her posses- 
sions lay on the table; this was a cedar box, 
with a lid that frequently defied both persua- 
sion and force. It is almost needless to say 
that this was a present that Reggie had made 
her during a fitful fever of carpentering. But 
a case of jewels would have pleased her less. 


yo 


CARRINGTON 


Carrington’s clock remarked that it was 
ten; then a quarter ^>ast; than eleven. The 
fire was kindly still, though not so uproari- 
ously cheerful. 

Meantime Reggie had awoke, and had 
found the most alarming quantity of sup- 
pressed sleep still in his system, had , thrown 
off his clothes, and tumbled into bed, without 
giving one thought to anything in the world, 
except the immediate and imperative necessity 
of going to sleep again. 

As eleven struck, Carrington got up and 
went to his room. 

He was lying on his back in dreamless 
sleep. One arm was thrown carelessly out- 
side on the counterpane, and his breath came 
evenly between parted lips. His candle stood 
still lighted on the dressing-table, and his 
clothes were in a mixed untidy heap on the 
floor. Carrington stood by the bed for a 
moment, half afraid of his waking, half longing 
he should wake, and then quietly took up his 
candle and left the room. 



* 














$ 



JACK AND POLL 

















- 



















• 1 



JACK AND POLL 



'HE worst of possessing a parrot is that its 


-L so-called owner is always conscious of 
his own glaring inferiority in point of ability 
and knowledge, though ability is perhaps too 
superficial a word to apply to the deep malig- 
nant wisdom implanted in its breast. To 
begin with, parrots live on an average, if they 
have been properly acclimatized, about a hun- 
dred years. During the whole of this period they 
get wiser and wiser up to the end. Eventually a 
parrot dies of stomachic disorders which leave 
its clearness of head quite untouched. That 
is a severe handicap for any man to labor 
under. The other day only, though I am 
becoming more accustomed to parrots than I 
ever thought I should be, the full irony of the 
situation burst upon me. Personally, I have 
not nearly reached middle age, my parrot I 


74 


JACK AND POLL 


believe to be about sixty-five, and it lias prob- 
ably thirty more years to live. Thirty years 
ago I was not nearly born, yet even then, this 
venerable fowl was considerably older than I 
am now, and infinitely wiser than I ever shall 
be. Yet by some left-handed arrangement of 
the order of things, I am legally the owner 
and master of it. I fully feel the absurdity of 
my position, but there is no cure. It is no 
good presenting the bird to Mr. Gladstone, 
for in the infinity of the wisdom of a parrot, 
the difference between the ability of the Prime 
Minister and me, which to judge by human 
standards is oppressively great, becomes as 
nothing. Mathematicians tell us that a mil- 
lion is not appreciably nearer infinity than a 
unit. This incredible truth illustrates, in a 
way, what I am trying to point out. 

More than this, a parrot is born into this world 
with an instinctive knowledge of its own utter 
aloofness and its dazzling pre-eminence. Not 
that a parrot ever is dazzled, it is only we who 
are dazzled when we think of it. A parrot is 
never surprised, it is never amused, it is never 
humbled, and it is never kind. Parrots will 
submit, it is true, to be handled by a certain 
number of human beings without causing a 
hooked beak to meet in their fingers, but it is 


JACK AND POLL 


75 


not kindness that prompts this concession; it 
is only a far-reaching contempt bred of an 
unwilling familiarity. 

But why, it will be asked, do I keep a par- 
rot, if I feel thus towards it? For several 
reasons. In the first place, it is good to have 
a high and impossible standard to live by; a 
parrot’s presence is therefore stimulating and 
healthy. Again, though I cannot amuse my 
parrot, my parrot can, in lighter moments, 
amuse me. It does not amuse me because it 
thinks I like to be amused, on the contrary, if 
I make it clear that I want to be amused, it will 
freeze me with a cold, unblinking eye, until I 
creep away ashamed. When it amuses me, it 
does so of its own essential sense of humor, it 
makes jokes because it is witty, in obedience 
to the imperious necessities of its own unfath- 
omable mind. Like the Master of Ballan- 
trae, I sometimes wish it was kinder, but if it 
was kind, it would not be a parrot. Again it 
may at any moment say things, which, though 
they were better unsaid, I would sooner it 
said to me, than to other people, because I 
understand it, and in away I love it — ( ‘Aimer 
c’est tout comprendre.” 

Is it then quite inaccessible to our little 
human needs and longings; will it never love 


?6 


JACK AND POLL 


anybody? At heart, never. But in spite of the 
nirvanic remoteness of its nature, it is not 
quite untroubled by human emotions. It is 
intolerably and inordinately greedy, and it 
pleases me to compel it to come down from 
its high standard under the influence of this 
emotion. It will never care for me, I know, 
but I can make it pretend to, if I trifle with 
the sugar basin. That is something. As 
long as it retains the slightest desire for sugar, 
I can make it give me Judas kisses, I can 
make it bark like a dog, and I can make it 
call itself “Pretty Polly,” which is nonsense, 
for it knows that it is not pretty as well as I 
do, and has no pleasing illusions whatever on 
that score. In a word, for the time being, I 
am its master, it knows it, and it hates it; and 
it knows I am not really its master, and it 
knows I know it knows it. We quite under- 
stand each other. 

Several times a day then, I am in the tem- 
porary position of being its master, on those 
occasions when its abilities are temporarily 
eclipsed by its appetites. But I feel all the 
time that it is not a true position; though I 
can force it to my level, and even below it, 
through its material needs, it never really 
regards me for a moment as its equal. I have 


JACK AND POLL 


77 


a mysterious dominion over sugar, and for a 
share in that, it is willing to talk to me and 
to bark for me, but it no more admits my 
superiority than I admit the superiority of 
my banker to myself. But he has in his 
keeping certain or uncertain sums of money 
which I have to ask him for, and in the same 
way the parrot has to ask me for lumps of 
sugar; that he regards the sugar as really his, 
is certain from his behavior, when he is left 
alone with it. 

I only once felt really wiser than this bird. 
That was on an occasion when it got into the 
garden, and climbed laboriously by beak and 
claws, for its wings are cut, up a high tree. 
It enjoyed it thoroughly for a time, and was 
good enough to tell me so, in a way that is 
peculiarly its own. It calculated the exact 
height at which I could not reach it, standing 
on a chair, having previously ascertained that 
the step-ladder had gone to be repaired, and 
sat on a small bough there, and talked to me. 
First of all, it assumed a pious air, which sat 
remarkably badly on it, and said, “L,et us 
pray.” Then it barked at me, and said, 
“Poor Puss;” it was rather excited, and I 
think it was trying to be sarcastic by talking 
nonsense to me, as if to a child. Then it 


73 


JACK AND POLL 


whistled several tunes, and asked itself whether 
it wished to go to bed. Then it pretended 
that elm bark was good to eat, though it must 
have known it was not, and spread its clipped 
wings as if it intended to fly away. This was 
in order to frighten me, for it laughed in a 
hoarse manner afterwards. I suppose it 
thought it was funny. 

Of course I couldn’t stand this, so I retired 
to a tree where its coarse gibes could not 
reach me, and read a book. The bird there- 
upon came down a little lower, and staggered 
along to the very end of a small branch, where 
it looked at me scornfully through the leaves. 
Then it made* a real fool of itself. It began 
nibbling at the branch between the tree and 
it, without having the slightest idea that 
when it had bitten it through, it would itself 
fall heavily to the ground. I warned it sol- 
emnly what would happen, for I was afraid it 
would hurt itself if it fell. Of course it thought 
it knew best, and went on, only pausing to 
blow its nose contemptuously at me. Natur- 
ally in a minute or two it did fall heavily to 
the ground, and said “Damn” very distinctly 
and decidedly. But before I could get to it, 
it had scrambled up the tree again, and pre- 
tended it had fallen down on purpose. But it 


JACK AND POLL 


79 


was no use, it knew perfectly well that it liad 
made a real fool of itself. 

The tree on which it was sitting was part 
of a rookery, and it went up to the top towards 
evening to have a chat. There were a good 
many rooks at home, and I watched the 
interview with some curiosity. It evidently 
thought it was making an impression, for I 
could hear it talking with ease and animation. 
There were some twenty rooks listening to it 
at first, but by degrees they all tailed away, 
and it was left quite alone. So it made a few 
reflections of a perfectly appalling character, 
and waited for the result. But nobody gave 
it a piece of sugar to stop its unchristian sen- 
timents, and it realized at that moment, per- 
haps for the first time, that it was not quite 
everybody. It came thoughtfully down again, 
and walked into its cage which was standing 
on the lawn, and appeared lost in meditation. 
It did not even remember to curse the house- 
maid, when she covered it up for the night, 
and I recollect her saying to me in the morn- 
ing that she thought it must be ill. 

When the personality of my parrot became 
too oppressive, I used to unbend my mind 
over my jackdaw. The parrot thought the 
jackdaw low, and would never take the slight- 


8o 


JACK AND POLL 


est notice of him, except once, when he was 
standing close to its cage, it took the oppor- 
tunity to spit at him through the wires. It 
would shrug its shoulders when it saw me 
speaking to the jackdaw, and think that it 
was a very suitable companion for me. 
The only thing in common between them 
was that they both swore, when they were 
annoyed. 

The jackdaw was always much more of a 
companion than the parrot, though he was a 
low pothouse sort of bird. Still, when the 
parrot had been more than usually unkind, I 
longed for sympathy of any sort, and the jack- 
daw never refused that. 

He always took the keenest interest in 
whatever I happened to be doing. He used 
to sit on the table if I was reading or writing, 
full of great thoughts. The turning over of 
leaves in a book, for some reason he regarded 
as a personal insult to himself, and he would 
peck at the fresh page with a zest that never 
seemed to lose the first fanatic zeal which had 
inspired it. He had a tinful of water in which 
he use to wash every morning, spilling some- 
thing more than half of it on the carpet. 
When he had finished washing, it was neces- 
sary to upset the rest all over the room* This 


JACK AND POLL 


81 


was an almost invariable part of the process; 
I made spasmodic efforts to prevent it, but all 
to no purpose. One morning when the carpet 
was particularly marshy, I tried the effect of 
giving him no bath at all ; but he made up for 
that by getting into my tea-caddy, which hap- 
pened to be open, and fluttered the tea all 
over the breakfast table. But when I remem- 
bered on the next occasion, on which the mess 
was unbearable, to shut the tea-can, I thought 
I could laught at fate. Not so. A harsh, 
discordant voice summoned me to my bed- 
room, where I found that a misguided and 
improvident desire for cold water had led him 
to trust himself to the hidden depth of my 
water jug, where he was in imminent danger 
of drowning. 

One morning my watch was not to be found. 
The parrot of course knew all about, but it 
was too busy practicing a new sort of sneeze 
to attend to me. However a watch hidden by 
a jackdaw is not at all likely to be stolen, 
though there is a certain risk of treading on 
it. I cursed myself mildly for having left it 
on the table, and sat down to breakfast. The 
parrot laughed coldly and mockingly, and the 
jackdaw seemed to have something to tell me, 
but thought better of it, and went off to say 


82 


JACK AND POLL 


three sharp words to a golf ball,- which he had 
long regarded with entirely unfounded and 
unconcealed dislike. After breakfast I satis- 
fied myself that the watch was not in any 
danger of being trodden on, from being play- 
fully concealed under the hearth rug, and 
mentioned to my servant that there was a 
watch somewhere about, and that I should be 
glad to have it, when it turned up. Before 
long he returned with the teapot in his hand, 
and there at the bottom parboiled and ruined, 
lay what had once been an excellent time- 
keeper. I imprisoned the jackdaw under the 
“Times” as a sort of penance, and he soon 
ate his way out through the only leading article 
that I had wanted to read. 

Alas, that was really his last piece of mis- 
chief ! Early in the spring he ruined his 
digestion by eating too largely of the worms, 
which had been out of reach for months of 
frost, and in the early days of March he 
hopped into his cage for the last time, 
shutting the door behind him as he had 
always done, and in the morning I found 
him dead. An old servant asked me if she 
might have the poor little body, she had 
liked him so, she said, and she bore it 
away with a sort of melancholy triumph. A 


JACK AND POLL 


83 


week afterwards she brought me a large square 
parcel discreetly wrapped up in brown paper, 
and would I accept of it. It would look so 
nice, she thought, on the chimney-piece of 
my sitting-room. I opened the parcel with 
faint apprehension, and it was as I thought. 
The jackdaw was standing in a bower of 
brilliant everlasting flowers, with his head 
turned very much to one side to obviate the 
depth of case, which his beak would other- 
wise have' entailed. His beak was slightly 
parted, and, as if to commemorate the cause of 
his death, there dangled from it a small pink 
string. Behind was a blue sky, which grew 
on the low horizon into a glowing sunset 
“it’s so natural like,” said the old lady, 
“picking up a worm.” 

The parrot coughed and sneezed when he 
saw it. Such things do not interest him. 


































. 




t 








I 























































* 

. 










AT KING’S CROSS STATION 
































- 







































































' ■' r I 













































AT KING’S CROSS STATION 



'HB pathos of small and trivial disappoint- 


inents has to me a heartsearching sad- 
ness, which I feel to be quite unreasonable, 
but against which I am perfectly powerless. 
The great tragic figures of history have a cer- 
tain recompense in the grandeur and sublim- 
ity of their woes, and though our eyes are 
dim when we read of their mighty sorrows, 
yet simply because they are mighty we feel 
the keenness of them less; and it is in the 
small unnoticed sorrows of average people that 
I realize most deeply the infinite pathos of 
human life. 

It is the story of one of these small disap- 
pointments that I am about to describe to you. 
There will be no loud-sounding grief in these 
pages, no wailing nor beating of the breast, 
only a few silent tears shed by a silent unat- 
tractive woman, a little wretchedness, perhaps 


88 AT KINGS CROSS STA TION 


a sleepless hour or two, and for me a regret 
that will not soon be still. You will think, I 
dare say, that it does not matter much ; and I 
would not contradict you; after all, what is 
one little disappointment among the million 
aching tragedies round us? 

O'ne dark winter afternoon I was leaving 
London for the north. I had come up to town 
on matters of business which had arranged 
themselves satisfactorily, I had lunched with 
a friend whose company is always particularly 
congenial to me, I had an interesting novel, 
the corner seat in a third class carriage, and a 
hot water tin; above all I was "going home, 
and was purely happy in a purely animal 
way. 

Outside, the densest fog was drifting in at the 
yawning mouth of the station, like some cold 
flood of poisonous disease. The air was a tan- 
gle of broken sounds, engines yelled, doors 
banged, and couplings clashed and jangled 
together, all coming to my ears through the 
thick palpable atmosphere, as if through lay- 
ers of wool. On the platform, opposite to my 
carriage, a train of emigrants was just starting 
for some northern port; many had evidently 
got to that stage, when suffering, grown dumb 
and weary with waiting, is often mistaken for 


A T KING ’ 5 CROSS S TA TION 89 


indifference, and sadness for sullenness. The 
frost had laid a heavy hand on the town dur- 
ing the last few days, and the cheerless warmth 
of the station was only just enough to melt 
the little icicles, which dripped dismally from 
the eaves of the carriage on to the ledge out- 
side, reminding me of two crusty maiden ladies 
whom I had seen that morning, who had 
determined to be no pleasanter to me than they 
could possibly help. Such things, when one 
is particularly conscious of a happy background 
to one’s own thoughts, strike merely the artis- 
tic eye, and leave the inward eye undimmed. 
I thought only how completely dreary the 
whole scene was, and it added its mite to my 
own sense of well-being. 

Opposite to me there sat a young woman of 
a particularly English stamp, who had seldom, 
perhaps, known the stress of actual want, but 
never comfort. She had a hard, rather 
unpleasant face, the surface of which suggested 
gold-beater’s skin highly polished and crudely 
tinted. Her eyes were indeterminate in color, 
they were neither green nor yellow nor blue, 
and reminded me of the buttons on a Norfolk 
jacket of my own, the colors of which concen- 
trated on their polished surface the sober hues 
of the wool. Her nose was ol that order which 


9 o 


A T KINGS CROSS STA TION 


is entirely concealed by a profile view; and 
there were high spots of color on her cheeks, 
which emphasized her already emphatic cheek 
bones. Her mouth, which she held slightly 
open, displayed several prominent teeth. 
The lower lip seemed to have been intended 
for another upper lip, and its corners were 
extremely unfinished. A possible expression 
of honesty in her whole face might, perhaps, 
be merely due to its marked want of ability. 

She wore a small hat, which sat in the front 
row, as it were, of an orchestral fringe of gigantic 
proportions, composed of vaguely- colored hair, 
which, like her lower lip, seemed to have been 
designed for some one else. Her black jacket 
was very short in the sleeves, and displayed a 
wrist with a prominent bone, and her gloves 
were far from covering the deficiencies of her 
jacket. Round her neck she wore a massive 
chain and locket, too magnificent to be valu- 
able; and an aimless braid ran round the but- 
ton-holes and edges of her jacket, seeming to 
terminate in a side pocket, wdiich bulged 
largely, and from which dangled a fragment 
of limp, whitey-brown paper. Beneath her 
skirt might be seen elastic-sided boots, the 
toes of which were encased in a sort of patent 
leather; a curious white line strayed round 


A T KINGS CROSS STA TION 91 


them, imitating apparently a set of loops and 
crosscuts, as performed by a brilliant skater. 

Next her sat a middle-aged gentleman, who 
was particularly odious to me, because I felt 
sure that he was in the same brutally con- 
tented state of mind as myself. He was smok- 
ing a good cigar, and was reading the Pall 
Mall . As the woman took her seat, he turned 
to her and said: 

“You know, miss, this is a smoking car- 
riage.” 

There was no audible reply to this remark, 
but her lower lip drooped a little more, 
and then resumed its normal position. An 
uncertain movement of the tongue against her 
prominent teeth, seemed to convey acquies- 
cence. 

The middle-aged gentleman turned away 
again, and resumed his Pall Mall. The 
woman cast a furtive glance round, as if she 
had been guilty of something rather improper, 
and out of her jacket pocket drew a woolly 
mass, which resolved itself into a darning 
needle, a piece of purple worsted thread, and 
an old black stocking. She removed her 
gloves, and made several ineffectual attempts 
to thread her needle. Eventually she wor- 
ried a small end of the worsted through, and 


v 


92 


AT KINGS CROSS STATION 


with her teeth persuaded the rest to follow, 
and began darning with large uncertain 
stitches. Her hands were cold and moist, and 
she occasionally wiped them against her jacket, 
and her fingers trembled rather. She sat in 
an awkward position, with her shoulders 
sloping forward; and her lower lip drooping 
more than ever. Now and then she drew a 
handkerchief from her pocket, and squeezed 
the end of her nose with it. This action was 
usually accompanied with a deprecating 
glance round, and more than once she caught 
my eye. After a little reflection I decided 
that hers were green. 

It was during one of these submissive 
movements, that a porter came round and lit 
some more of the gas-lamps outside in the 
station, that I saw with greater distinctness, 
how ill-favored and slovenly she was. Her 
gloves had fallen from her lap on to the 
carriage floor, and she had not noticed them. 

I was about to call her attention to this 
fact, when the ticket collector looked in and 
asked for our tickets. The middle-aged 
gentleman grunted “Season,’ * and grurnb- 
lingly drew out a greasy leather case, with a 
cardboard square sticking up between two 
bank-notes. The other tickets were shown, 


A T KING'S CROSS STA TION 


93 


and still the young woman made no sign, but 
darned on with greater assiduity. The ticket 
collector had a harsh, unpleasant voice. 

“Now, young woman, your ticket.” 

Slowly and fumblingly she took out the 
whitey-brown paper parcel from her pocket, 
and affected to feel in the corners of it. I 
think I never saw so poor a dramatic display. 
It was intensely obvious that she had no 
ticket at all. To my mind, at that moment, 
the marked want of ability entirely accounted 
for the possible honesty of expression to which 
I have alluded above. 

The other pocket and the stocking-foot 
were then subjected to the same aimless 
scrutiny; but their assets were only a few 
cake crumbs and a brass thimble. 

The collector grew impatient. 

“Well, where’s your ticket? You can’t 
keep the train waiting. ’ ’ 

The lower lip gathered itself up for speech. 

“I don’t know where it is.” 

“How did you lose it?” 

No answer. 

“Where are you going to?” 

“I shall be all right if I can get to 
Grantham.” 

The words came out in sloppy syllables. 


94 


AT KING'S C£ OSS STATION 


Before she spoke, one knew from her boots> 
her jacket, her gloves, her fringe, her splendid 
locket, exactly how she would speak. 

“The fare’s eight and nine. Be quick, 
please, the train is over time already.” 

A further investigation produced a leather 
purse with a broken steel clasp, fastened 
round with a frayed elastic band. She drew 
out a florin, then two more shillings, a three- 
penny-piece, and four coppers. 

“Come, that’s not enough,” said the man. 
“You’ll have to get out of this; no defrauding 
the company. I could give you in charge for 
trying, to travel without a ticket.” 

She gathered up her work and thrust it into 
the front of her jacket. A band-box, and a 
small plant in a pot formed the rest of her 
luggage. She did not appear to mind much, 
and stepped out on to the damp platform, and 
stood beneath a flaring gas-lamp. If she had 
been a prima donna, receiving the ovation of 
a crowded house, she would have chosen 
exactly that position. She laid her band-box 
on the platform, and put the plant by its 
side. 

The ticket collector had moved on to the 
next carriage, and I heard his harsh voice 
demanding tickets. The woman followed him 


A T KING S CROSS S TA TION 95 


with her eyes, and when his back was turned, 
took two steps towards the carriage, from 
which she had just been evicted, and then 
stopped. She could probably have entered 
unseen, though whether her possible honesty 
or her distrust of her own ability checked her, 
I do not know. 

She went back to her former position, and 
drew the whitey-brown paper from her pocket. 
It contained a hard green rasping apple. She 
took a large bite out of it, and proceeded to 
chew it. A piece of decent size was stowed 
away in her cheek. Just as she was raising 
her hand to take another bite, the corners of 
her mouth, which had shown a bitter tension, 
for which after the first bite I had held the 
apple responsible, broke down, and two large 
tears gathered in her eyes. She did not 
abandon the apple, but she took out her 
handkerchief, and convulsive movements of 
the throat mingled themselves with the swal- 
lowing. The whole scene lasted not more 
than twenty or thirty seconds, and we slid 
slowly out of the station. 

Then it was that the pathos of the whole 
scene came upon me, the pitiful incongruity 
of the band-box, the tears, and the apple. It 
was too late; I threw down the window, and 


96 AT KING S CROSS S TA TION 


looked back. I could still see her, a misty 
figure through the fog, and one hand was 
raised to her mouth. Whether it contained 
the apple or the handkerchief, I do not know; 
but for me the bitter memory was made. 

Ten minutes later my eye caught sight of 
a dark object on the floor; she had forgotten 
to take her gloves. 






y < 














i 

s' 






THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING 




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THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING 


F OR many years I used to live in Rondon. 

My rooms looked out on to the Em- 
bankment, where sometimes even in a sti- 
fling June, the breath of country summers is 
felt at evening, when the tide turns seawards, 
and the foul water is carried off to the ocean. 
In that soft hour that follows sunset I could 
sometimes make the broad stream talk to me 
of the pleasant time, when its waters glided 
under the green shadows of the upper valleys, 
and plunged into the dark coolness below the 
weirs, where they wandered for a time, lost in 
the happy .trouble of circling backwaters, 
before they ran on between noisy banks, and 
broke against sullen bridges, and were sad- 
dled with grim burdens. And when the tide 
first turned, and the wind blew up-stream, I 
could sometimes taste, or thought I tasted, 
the infinite freshness of the sea. 


ioo THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING 


But there was little else to remind one of 
the existence of anything so remote from the 
disquiet of streets and hurrying crowds, and 
of all crowds the Eondon crowd is the sad- 
dest; that ceaseless stress of men and women 
who are all hurrying, who may not stop, who 
have not time to think. They work to gain 
a tranquility which few of them attain. Their 
only thought is to make some money, to earn 
enough to give them a little leisure at their 
lives’ grey end, in which they can rest for a 
minute, can get drowsy before they fall asleep. 
And the very contrasts are not the least sad 
part of this dismal tragedy. On Bank holi- 
days there are the same crowds, to whom the 
habit of hurrying has become a necessity, 
whose leisure is as feverish as their work. 
This eternal necessity of work however, brings 
with it a sort of consolation under certain cir- 
cumstances, which is as melancholy as its sor- 
rows 

One morning, I remember, I was passing 
down the Embankment, when I saw a small 
crowd, chiefly of children, form itself in front 
of me. The centre of its attraction seemed to 
be a policeman, who was carrying in his arms 
a small still bundle. The explanation was 
forthcoming. A small boy was my informant. 


THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING ioi 


“ There’s a poor baby fell off the wall, and 
killed itself. Ain’t it a shame?” 

The small still body was the baby which 
had just been killed. Yes, it did seem a 
shame. But that was all, it was only a poor 
baby. And my informant proceeded to black 
my shoes, with hands untouched by water or 
emotion. 

Just below my window, there used to be a 
recess, where an old man last year sold chest- 
nuts, and where a little abutment of wall 
sheltered him from easterly winds. One day, 
as I came home, I saw a couple of men put- 
ting up useless iron railings there, with spikes 
at the top, so as to shut this little corner out 
of the street. The chestnut seller had not 
been there for some weeks. It had been bit- 
terly cold weather, and he used to cough a 
good deal before his disappearance. He was 
probably suffering from some weakness in the 
chest; that is very common in London, where 
there is a good deal of illness. Two days 
after this iron railing had been erected, he 
came back, wheeling his little stove in front 
of him. He looked very thin, and he wore a 
scarf round his throat. There was a bitter 
wind blowing at the time, and the corner 
which used to shelter him was quite inaccess- 


io2 THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING 


ible. He stood there for a few minutes, and 
then wheeled his stove away, and I lost sight 
of him in the crowd. Perhaps he found 
another sheltered corner, perhaps he did not. 
But the worst of it is that the tall iron rail- 
ing is entirely useless. 

Further down the street is a factory, where 
they make little glass ornaments, and for 
six weeks before Christmas a larger staff is 
employed, and the result is that they turn out 
or finish a great stock of Christmas cards with 
frosted foregrounds. These foregrounds are, 
or used to be, made by a fine glass-dust blown 
on to a slightly adhesive surface. One year 
they were very much in vogue, and the staff 
employed was consequently very large. The 
impalpable glass-dust is blown down a tube on 
to the cards, chiefly by children, for it is a 
work that requires little or no skill. Some of 
it sticks on the adhesive surface, some of it is 
blown too hard or too softly — it does not mat- 
ter much, for it is very cheap — and floats 
about in the air, and the children breathe it 
into their lungs. It is not at all good for the 
lungs, but children are nearly as cheap as 
glass-dust. The Christmas cards are fashion- 
able, and they have delightful mottoes on 
them. The picture often represents a country 


THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING 103 

church, in the background, with sprigs of 
holly in the corners, and in front those terri- 
ble frosted foregrounds. They would not be 
nearly so pretty if they were the color of 
blood. Even the realistic tendencies of this 
age might not quite like that. 

A realistic age likes to be harrowed, and it 
likes to read things which it reflects with 
pride do not make it feel sick. These it calls 
strong and it is very fond of strong things. 
But it draws a curious inconsistent line 
between the things that stir its sluggish emo- 
tions, and produce fear, longing, or pity,' and 
those which make it feel ashamed or make it 
ashamed of not feeling ashamed. 

This last class of things is altogether in bad 
taste; and the writer who speaks of them is 
fain to fill his belly with the husks the swine 
eat, and everyone says, “ How very suitable.” 
While those who tell us things that should 
not even be named among us, these are they 
that sit in kings’ houses. It is very easy to 
be disgusting, and no wonder it is a common 
profession. 

The grinding need for going on is what 
seems to me so horrible, and what makes it so 
much worse is, that these poor people do not 
know how to be quiet, do not even want to be 


104 THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING 

quiet. The real Londoner of these orders 
feels lonely in the country; he misses the bus- 
tle and the stir of his home. Sometimes, how- 
ever, he can see the other point of view, 
though he cannot attain it. In these moods 
he will go to the National Gallery, and the 
sunlit mists of Turner, the sleeping Italian 
valley, the remote serenity of early Madon- 
nas, and the smooth animals of Landseer 
have a certain effect. He sees the existence 
of another sort of life; he realizes, though he 
does not know it, that such scenes are the 
legitimate outcome of another mood than his. 
I oiten speak to men whom I see there. One 
of them said to me once, “ Yes, sir, I like to 
see the pictures; they seem to make me feel 
quieter when I get home.” 

Atmosphere is responsible for a great deal. 
Twenty years ago a consumptive patient was 
kept in hot rooms, was forbidden to go out 
when it was at all cold, and under this regime 
grew worse and died. But there are Swiss 
valleys, where you may see in the depths of 
winter a hundred men and women skating 
and tobogganing in a temperature of some- 
thing below zero. These are the consump- 
tive patients, who live out of doors, and do not 
die. It is exactly the same with our moral 


THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING 105 


nature; it lives not by the care that is taken 
of it, but by the atmosphere it breathes; and 
an air of tranquility, a sense of space is what 
the National Gallery gives to those who could 
scarcely tell you the name or the subject of 
any picture they had seen in it. 

I once saw two very promising figures stand- 
ing in front of an entombment, which used to 
be attributed to Michael Angelo. The man 
had got hold of a catalogue, and he and the girl 
who was with him, laboriously spelled out 
this information. They neither of them 
looked at the picture at all, but before they 
went on to the next the girl remarked; 
“ Michael Angelo. Ain’t it a rum name?” 

But even these were somehow worked 
upon by the sense of space and peace. I 
passed them again as they came out into the 
Square. They parted at the top of the steps, 
and the man said: “Well, Liza, them pictures 
is ’evingly. Good-bye. I’ll be reound ’o 
Sunday.” And they kissed each other 
resoundingly. 

The comedy of the great play is so inextri- 
cably mixed up with the tragedy, that one is 
puzzled as to which is the most inevitably 
radical, and whether we ought to laugh or cry. 
If that be the true definition of humor, Lon- 


io6 THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING 


don is humorous enough, and Heine need 
concern us no longer, nor Jerome K. Jerome 
either, for upon my life, I know not whether I 
want to laugh or to cry when I see what he 
has done. Perhaps after all London is a great 
comedy, and I have been mistaking it for a 
tragedy — such mistakes have been made 
before — but think of the frosted Christmas 
cards. That is very melancholy: the comedy 
is in temporary eclipse. 

It is not the fashion to get up very early in 
London, for those at least of us who need not 
work all the time it is day, but sometimes when 
you are returning from your balls at five in the 
morning, you might drive round to look at 
Covent Garden Market. It would amuse you, 
or I should not recommend it to you, and you 
would form a very fine contrast as you stood 
there in your ball-dress, with a handful of 
cotillion toys in your hand. The critics of 
the New English Art Club would do well to 
to see you then, and you would be a fugue or 
a diapason for the rest of your life, with a 
Leit-motif embroidered on your skirt, and an 
adagio worked into your coils of black hair. 

One morning, early in June, I stood there 
at the corner, where the traffic passes from 
the roaring Strand up to the Market A 


THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING 107 

small donkey-cart had caught my eye some 
twenty yards down the street. The donkey 
trotted along contentedly, a mouse-colored 
patient donkey, hardly bigger than a New- 
foundland dog. Behind it lumbered a ram- 
paging ’bus, nodding twelve feet high above 
the pavement. In the donkey-cart were sit- 
ting an old woman who was driving, and a 
child of about four on the seat beside her. 
At the moment when they reached the cor- 
ner, the road was blocked by a lumbering 
fruit van which was also going into the Mar- 
ket. The ’bus threatened to overwhelm them 
from behind, or to crush them against the 
fruit van in front. But the small child, with- 
out looking round, held up a tiny chubby 
fist with admirable gravity and importance, 
as he had seen footmen do on their smart car- 
riages when the way is blocked. The ’bus 
driver saw it — though it was very, very small 
— and pulled up his horses just in time, but 
they were so close that one of them put down 
his head and nipped off a small piece of let- 
tuce from the back of the donkey-cart. The 
owner of the small fist maintained his profes- 
sional gravity to the end, and kept that ridic- 
ulously tiny hand in the air till the fruit van 
had passed round the corner, and the donkey’s 


io8 THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING 


head was directed up the side street, and then 
he lowered the danger signal. 

The night had been very wet, though the 
sky was now blue and clear. One old man 
arrived rather late: the thick mud on the 
wheels of his cart showed he had come over a 
bad road, and had passed through much rain, 
and the contents of one of his hampers was 
quite spoiled. It was full of cherries; they 
looked a little over ripe, and the rain had 
gutted them, and they were nothing more 
than a red mess of juice and stones and stalks. 
When he saw the state they were in, he 
stripped off the label which advertised them 
at 4 d. the pound, and substituted one offering 
them at half that price. But the cherries re- 
mained unsold, till a seedy-looking man dis- 
mounting from a van belonging to a jam man- 
ufactory offered him three shillings for the 
lot. There could not have been less than 
twenty or twenty -five pounds weight of fruit, 
and he refused the offer. Half an hour later 
they were still unsold, and as I left the Mar- 
ket I saw him look wistfully at me. “The 
lot for half-a-crown,” lie said. “They’re a 
bit spoiled by the rain, sir.” 

What could I do? I could not buy up all 
the spoiled fruit in the Market, and twenty 


THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING 109 


pounds of crushed cherries were hardly a pur- 
chase which a housekeeper would welcome. 
But I remembered a scene which happened at 
King’s Cross Station, and I bought them. It 
would have been easier to have given him 
half-a-crown, and told him to throw the cher- 
ries away, but it was not safe. Even poor 
people, you must know, have feelings, and 
it is as well not to hurt people’s feelings, even 
those of poor people, if you can avoid doing 
so. From a Political Economist’s point of 
view my purchase was horribly immoral: in- 
directly, I believe, it encouraged the sale of 
fruit which was unfit for consumption, and 
the consequence was that I had to take a han- 
som back home, for I could not carry twenty 
pounds of cherries about the street, and the 
juice ran out and made a little purple puddle 
on the floor, and the driver demanded half-a- 
crown for a new mat. “ But it was the old 
man’s fault for not packing his cherries prop- 
erly.” Quite so. I am not defending my- 
self ; on the contrary I pleaded guilty without 
reservation, or an appeal for mercy. Yet the 
old man looked very wistful, and very disap- 
pointed. He had taken a great deal of trou- 
ble in the picking of the cherries, and they 
had been very good cherries, rich black-hearts 


no THE SOUND OF THE GRINDING 

with plenty of juice; and if you had felt as I 
felt one day, when my train glided out of 
King’s Cross Station, I think you would 
perhaps have done as I did. 












BLUE STRIPE 























































- 


Jr 

























• 










BLUE STRIPE 


T HE sight of some very familiar object, 
observed again even half unconsciously 
after some great change has happened, is full 
of a pathos almost unbearable. That ruthless 
unchangingness of pieces of wood, of cloth, of a 
picture, or a wall-paper, which you see again, 
after the whole court of your being has been 
altered, mocks you with its unfeeling same- 
ness. The chair where she used to sit, which 
had for you a special clearness, which seemed 
almost like part of her, a companion, a famil- 
iar thing, remains the same in form, but the 
soul is gone. Wherever you turn, you see 
corpses from which a life has been withdrawn, 
phantoms to remind you of what you have 
lost. I remember, many years ago, standing 
here at this window, and looking out over the 
level lawn that stretches southwards from the 
house. Three days had passed since I saw 


BLUE STRIPE 


1 14 

it consciously. During those three days, no 
doubt it had often been in front of my eyes, 
but I had not seen it. A great change had 
happened, upstairs there was a darkened room 
— a life withdrawn, and a little life just started 
on its uncertain pilgrimage. 

The servants of course had drawn down the 
blinds, in decorous propriety ; but the sun was 
shining brightly outside, throwing the 
shadows of the windows-bars definedly on to 
the red stuff, and the color it cast into the 
room was horrible — ominous, like a theatrical 
hell. I drew up one blind, and let the light 
in; the other, I remember it perfectly to this 
day, was out of order, and my efforts only 
resulted in pulling the blind-cord down. 

“ It is a morning pure and sweet; ” I know 
no other words to express it, a day that might 
have been the herald of summer, had not the 
bare trees and yellow leaves lying thick on 
the ground told of November. The sky was 
woven over near the horizon with stream- 
ers of thinnest cloud; above the clear, pale 
blue. The air w r as unusually still, and the 
trees delicately defined against the sky and 
the dark masses of the cypresses reminded me 
of Albert Durer’s etchings. At one end of the 
lawn stood a lime tree, not yet entirely bare 


BLUE STRIPE 


ii5 


and gaunt, but the last leaves were now 
detaching themselves, and falling without twist 
or turn through the windless air, on to the 
grass below. A little further 011 the lawn 
ceased under thick evergreen bushes. 

Croquet hoops were still standing in order 
on the grass, but the dead leaves had drifted 
among them, and were clinging to their wires. 
I could see into the summer house opposite, 
and the mallets and balls were lying about in 
disorder on the floor; one was leaning against 
the back of a green garden chair. Every- 
thing was pitilessly unchanged. It was nearly 
a month since they had been touched, since 
she and I had come in together one October 
evening. Her sister and brother-in-law had 
been staying with us, and on the last day of 
their visit, the warm mildness of the late 
afternoon had tempted us out again, after we 
had all returned from a ride, and we had 
played croquet together till the carriage came 
round to take them to the station; and when 
we had seen them off, we wandered together 
round into the garden again, and continued 
the game in the state it had been left, taking 
two balls each. Eventually she put one of 
my balls out, and from sheer malice cro- 
quetted the other into the bushes at the end 


1 16 


BLUE STRIPE 


of the lawn, and by two extremely lucky 
shots finished the game, and stood laughing 
at my complete defeat 

“ Never say women can’t play games,” she 
said, drawing her arm through mine. 

“ It was foolish of you to croquet me into 
the bushes,” I remarked, “ because now you’ll 
have to go and find the ball. ’ ’ 

This she positively refused to do. It was 
my ball, and I must look for it. 

“ The batsman doesn’t look for the lost ball 
at cricket,” she said, with a superficial show 
of reason. 

The matter admitted of no compromise, so 
we went to the summer house, and placed our 
mallets there, leaving the ball in the bushes to 
take care of itself. She leaned her mallet 
against a green garden chair. 

The mellow glow in the western sky faded 
into the palest saffron, and overhead the vault 
grew deeper at the approach of night. Birds 
chuckled in the bushes, and before we turned 
to go indoors, a great yellow star had swung 
over the dim edge of the earth. In the still- 
ness our souls were mingled together, and we 
spoke of the dear event that was coming. 
That night a vague dread began to take shape 
in my mind, but she was blissfully serene and 


BLUE STRIPE 


117 

happy; the infinite yearning of a mother’s 
heart waiting for its fulfillment left no room 
for fear. 

She paused for a moment on the threshold 
of the door opening on to the steps that led 
into the garden; a waft of late jasmine was 
carried to us, and she stood to pluck a few 
blossoms, and gave me them to smell. I hardly 
know whether I love that smell or hate it 
most. Then she turned again, and looked 
out over the darkening earth. 

“This beautiful world,” she said, “it has 
been very good to us. But the winter is very 
close. I wish spring was nearer. ’ ’ 

Till the morning after the child was born 
all was going very well. She was weak, of 
course, and looked very fragile, but I never 
saw her looking more happy. Then some- 
thing happened, the doctor was sent for hur- 
riedly He was grave, he would not 

say anything for certain, he hoped it would 
be all right. But after his second visit, as he 
came from the room to where I was standing 
waiting on the landing outside, he shook his 
head, and held the door open for me to enter. 
“ You can go in,” he said, “ for a few min- 
utes. Then you will have to leave her with 
us. You had better . . . .” his eyes looked 


1 18 


BLUE STRIPE 


compassionately at me . . . . “ you had better 
prepare for the worst. It is not hopeless, but 
. . . . yes, yes; be brave, and leave it in God’s 
hands, when we have done our best.” 

The nurses had removed the little wailing 
child. She smiled at me as I entered but lay 
very still. The doctors had not told her how 
ill she was, but she must have heard his 
words to me, or guessed the import, and her 
eyes questioned me as I knelt down by her 
bed. 

“I think I know all,” she said. “It is 
good-bye, isn’t it ?” 

“No, no,” I whispered, “they hope — ” 

“Ah, I thought it had come to that. There 
is not much time then. Ah, my darling, 
what shall we say to each other ? We do not 
need to say much, do we ? We know without 
that. But it is very hard on you — very hard. 
Don’t grieve too much. The years are only 
little things. Till then — ah, Jack, there’s the 
boy.” 

“How can I bear it?” I cried. “You 
mustn’t leave me.” 

“It has been very sweet,” she whispered, 
“there is that, though I should wish to 
live.” 

I do not remember how the next minutes 


BLUE STRIPE 


119 


passed. All I know is that after a time the 
door opened again, and I was led out, that I 
kissed her once more — that I saw her dear 
eyes for the last time. 

Then twenty-four grey hours passed by, 
and on the next morning I remember going 
downstairs and pulling up one red blind, and 
breaking the cord of the other, and looking 
out again over the croquet lawn. 

This morning a curious fancy seized me. I 
went down among the bushes at the end of 
the lawn, and poked about them with a stick. 
They grew very thick, and I could see only a 
few feet into them. Where was it exactly? 
Ah, I recollect now seeing the green fans of 
that dwarf fir bend and nod suddenly. The 
shrub has grown a good deal, and it must be 
somewhere near the middle. That is it. 
My stick struck a hard substance, and after 
some pushing and shoving, something came 
out on the far side, and as it rolled down the 
little slope to the gravel path, the tassels of 
the dwarf fir again bent and rustled. 

There it lay, rather mildewy with long 
exposure, and slimed with snails. I see it has 
two red stripes, and my ball was blue. She 
must have croquetted her own ball away by 
mistake. 














I 




\ 


A WINTER MORNING 















































A WINTER MORNING 



k OR four long weeks we have been living 


-*■ in a world of whiteness. Rate in Decem- 
ber the first snow fell, and morning after 
morning I have seen the fine tracery of frost 
thick on my windows, bringing back to me 
one of the earliest and most mysterious of my 
childish memories. It was always a matter of 
dim wonder, and sometimes of serious specu- 
lation to me, how in the cover of the still 
barren nights those aerial sheets of white veg- 
etation grew and filled the nursery panes. I 
still remember the scorn poured on me by an 
elder brother, when I asked him what it was, 
though his answer that it was the frost, ren- 
dered it hardly more intelligible. These things 
do not get less wonderful as one gets older; 
the knowledge that those white forests are the 
effect of a condensation of the moist particles in 
the air, and their subsequent crystallization, 


124 


A WINTER MORNING 


seems to me only the substitution for a 
simple and unknown expression, one equally 
unknown and more complicated. 

But yesterday afternoon a message of change 
was whispered among the bushes, and the 
armies of the frost dropped their spears and 
swords. The soft plunge of spongy snow was 
busy in the shrubbery, and on the leaves the 
little icicles seemed to have grown less hard 
in outline. At nightfall a little bitter wind 
rose and sobbed round the house, and from 
time to time a cold patter of rain shivered 
against the windows, and with it there swept 
over me a memory which is ever new, but 
which the first relenting of the grip of frost 
brings back with a distinctness which does 
not grow less with years. 

I went up to bed last night with the old 
pain creeping and stirring again at the heart, 
till at last I dropped into the vague, shadow- 
haunted twilight of those grey slopes that lie 
between the shores of living consciousness 
and the deeper gulfs of sleep. Whenever our 
souls would pass into that dark sea beyond, 
they have always to wade through these ill- 
defined shallows, where the restless little waves 
beat upon the land, where we feel the chill of 
the deeps of unconsciousness, but not their 


A WINTER MORNING 


125 


quiet, as we stumble dizzily from the shore, 
only wanting to rest, yet not able to lose our- 
selves in the still depths beyond. 

All night I wandered as it seemed for long 
half-conscious years, on that grey borderland, 
not sleeping and not waking, moving painfully 
forward under a sunless sky, hearing strange 
moans and cries from the land which I could 
not leave, and the shrill pipe of the wind that 
seemed to blow all round me, and yet touched 
me not. Now and then that long monotony 
of sea and sky would resolve itself into the 
dim square of my window, and the blast that 
blew over those grey wastes was only the 
soughing of the breeze outside, and the dap- 
ping of the dying dame, But at last there 
came along the shore a little dgure moving 
quickly towards me, and as it came nearer I saw 
it was no dull contortion which my tired brain 
drew from some object in the room, for against 
the greyness it glowed with a lucid outline, 
and when it got close to me, I seemed to min- 
gle with it, and the weary twilight deepened 
into the blackness of dreamless sleep. 

To-day a faint sun looks on the trees that 
are mufded no longer, and the snow that still 
lies somewhat thick on the grass seems less 
impenetrably white; the oozy droppings from 


126 


A WINTER MORNING 


shrubs, and the last dead leaves that fell when 
the snow was yet thin, have stained it with an 
ugly brown. 

To me this first false hint of spring is laden 
with a memory which seems to grow more 
vivid with each slow turning year; perhaps 
the dream that I had last night has made its 
presence more insistent, for this morning it is 
with me like those strange throbs of double 
consciousness, which most of us know, the 
sense that something we have just said or seen 
is only the repetition of a real event which is 
intensely vivid to us, yet which we cannot 
grasp or localize. 

What I am going to tell you happened 
many years ago, twenty years ago this winter. 
I will try to say it in simple straightforward 
words, for it is a very simple story, and a very 
common one. 

It is twenty-six years ago since my wife 
died, since I was left alone with a year-old 
baby ; and it is twenty years ago since the baby 
died. 

We had twenty years ago a month of 
weather very like these last four weeks. The 
snow had fallen thickly for a day or two, and 
after that, the earth had lain still and white 
under the grip of a windless frost. One even- 


A WINTER MORNING 


127 


in g I was playing billiards here in the hall 
with my brother. The boy, Jack, was sitting 
011 the hearth-rug teasing his dog. The dog 
had enough of it before Jack ceased to find it 
amusing, and he walked with dignity to the 
door. Jack was left with nothing to do and 
he came to give a wide-eyed inspection to us. 

After a while it became clear that the little 
boxes under the table that held the chalk, and 
the square blocks of chalk, with their green 
paper coverings, were quite the most fascinat- 
ing things on earth. It was necessary to 
screw these boxes round on their pivots as 
fast as possible, and if the chalk flew out, it 
was simply charming. I have got one of these 
pieces of chalk still: I am going to tell you 
why I keep it. 

Jack was in the way, and when he was told 
so, it hurt his feelings rather: at any rate he 
did not understand it. But he retired to the 
hearth-rug with his bit of chalk, and drew 011 
the baize carpet a picture of a somewhat irreg- 
ular horse. 

In the course of a few minutes, my brother 
was about to make a stroke from over the box 
which had held Jack’s piece of chalk. It was 
a stroke involving a certain amount of screw 
back, and he wished to chalk his cue. Jack’s 


128 


A WINTER MORNING 


feelings were hurt again, when it was found 
that his chalk was wanted, and he was told 
not to touch it any more. Soon afterwards 
he went to bed. 

That night the snow, which had lain thick 
across the fields, was breathed on by the south 
wind; and when we let Jack’s dog out for a 
run, we stood in the porch for a moment and 
listened to the thud of the soft stuff as it slid 
off the laboring trees, which rustled and stirred 
as their burden dropped off them, and all 
round the bitter rain fell coldly through the 
dark night. 

As we passed into the hall again, I happened 
to notice Jack’s picture on the carpet. It was 
not quite finished, for it had only three legs, 
and the entire absence of any eye gave it a 
blind, idiotic appearance. 

To Jack this thaw was delightful; his pony 
passed from being a beautiful dream into a 
dear reality. After breakfast he cantered off 
with a groom in attendance, scattering glee- 
fully behind him the lumps of slushy snow. 

Two hours after, I was kneeling by his side 
in the hall. His pony had slipped on the hard 
treacherous ground beneath, and Jack w T as 
dying. He was quite unconscious, and it was 
doubtful whether he would regain conscious- 


A WINTER MORNING 


129 


ness again. His back — ah, God ! — was broken, 
and he had only an hour or so to live. 

He lay on a pile of rugs, close to the hearth. 
Near his head, on the carpet, I could see the 
faint outline of the unfinished horse, which the 
housemaids had not quite succeeded in obliter- 
ating. He lay quite still, and there was no 
disfigurement. His breath came evenly, and 
his eyes were shut. He looked like a child 
tired with play ; but Jack never used to be tired. 

Just before the end he stirred and opened 
his eyes, and saw me kneeling by him. The 
shadow of death was on his face. 

“I want to tell you,” he whispered, “I 
took — ’ ’ 

So he went out alone into the dark valley. 

They took him up to his room, and laid 
him on the bed. Death had been very merciful ; 
he had come swiftly and silently; there had 
been no struggle and no fear. But what was 
it he wanted to tell me? 

Hater in the day I went up again. His 
clothes were lying on a chair by the bed, and 
a sheet covered the still body of the child. 

More than half unconsciously I took them 
up, and laid them in a drawer. As I carried 
them across the room, something fell out of 
his coat pocket. 


130 


A WINTER MORNING 


It was a piece of chalk from the billiard 
table. 

But why does that little thing stand out so 
clearly to me from the heavy background of 
my sorrow? Why is the pathos of that one 
moment, when Jack wished to tell me of that 
tiny act of disobedience before the great 
silence closed about him, so piercingly sharp? 
The thought of it must have been present to 
him all the morning; for, when he woke for a 
moment from that dim hour which preceded 
death, the threads of interrupted consciousness 
reasserted themselves, though he went out 
into the dark valley with his secret untold. I 
cannot help feeling, quite irrationally, that if I 
had only remembered his childish desire for 
that bit of chalk in the morning, and given it to 
him, if he had only finished drawing his horse 
that the bitterness which now fills me would be 
measurably less. Yet there are those who in an 
ignorance which seems to be almost insolent, 
talk of little things not mattering, who would 
rob life of half its deepest emotions of joy and 
sorrow. Yet it is not that we need these little 
things to keep sorrow and joy alive, the 
strength of memory does not depend on them. 
Perhaps it is because those we loved and still 
love are human, because they were full of 


A WINTER MORNING 


i3i 

little wants and little failings, because tlie 
idea of a cold, disembodied perfection is not so 
dear to us as the memory of one who was 
human, who was imperfect, full of little cares 
and trivial wants, who felt small disappoint- 
ments and small homely joys, and whom, 
because we are human too, we love for these 
little things. 

The cold, unkind morning creeps on to 
noon: the trees look drowsy and tired, as if 
they had been awakened in the middle of the 
night by some bad news that banished sleep, 
though not the weary craving for it. A few 
birds peck aimlessly among the brown leaves 
that are beginning to appear again through 
the pitted snow. They seem half to realize 
that this promise of warmth and spring is 
delusive. 

Ah, my little Jack, I am very lonely and 
very tired. 







THE ZOO 







































































































































































































THE ZOO 


S OME of tlie saddest sights that I know in 
the saddest city of all the world, our 
English Eondon, are in be seen at the Zoo- 
logical Gardens. You may see there also 
some of the most amusing comedies, and 
screaming farces, that ever have been 
exhibited. The name “variety entertainment, ” 
always makes me think of the Zoo, and I 
never yet saw the entertainment which was 
half so varied, or half so entertaining. The 
chief comedians are tjie birds, particularly 
the parrots, but of parrots I have spoken 
elsewhere, and the comedies performed by 
parrots, as a dramatic company, are rather 
noisy. The reflective mind is out of its ele- 
ment in the parrot house. One might as well 
try to reflect during a railway accident. 

One of the most charming little comedies h 
deux is performed by a stork and a small 


136 


THE ZOO 


V 


seal. It is worth seeing more than once. 
The little seal spends his life in a tiny 
enclosure, in the center of which is a sunk iron 
basin full of water, and he passes the day in 
swimming rapidly round it, coming up every 
now and again to take breath, or to look at 
the prospect. He balances himself on the 
edge of the basin with one fin, and regards 
the world with a serious contemplative 
air. 

Sooner or later the stork, who lives on the 
adjoining estate, walks up to the wire netting, 
which separates them, and looks coldly at the 
seal. The seal has a warm heart, and he doesn’ t 
like it; so by way of amusing his friend he 
drops backs into the iron basin and races 
round it at express speed. When he is tired, 
he comes up and looks wistfully at the stork. 
The stork opens and shuts his mouth like a 
middle-aged gentleman, waking up from an 
after-dinner nap, and says, ‘ ‘ How very 
improper.’ ’ Poor little seal ! 

Even the comedies for the most part are 
really tragedies, for they end rather sadly. 
The small black bears who stand on their 
hind legs when you look at them, and keep 
their mouths permanently open, in case a 
piece of bun wanders by, are not properly 


THE ZOO 


*37 


comedians. Sometimes a bun strikes a bar 
of their cage, and falls where neither you nor 
they can reach it, and as you turn to go, they 
drop down on all-fours, and wait rather sadly 
for the next bun-bearer. I once saw a boy 
throw a pebble into the bear’s mouth. The 
bear snapped his teeth upon it, and then 
dropped it on the floor, but opened its mouth 
again, in case a bun flew in. But before he 
dropped the pebble he looked at us, and as 
Pierre Loti says, at that moment I caught his 
soul. He was surprised, and sorry, not angry, 
but puzzled. I was horibly afraid he would 
think it was I who had thrown it, which was 
of course extremely foolish of me, and I went 
to buy him something to eat. He was being 
fed by others when I came back, but in an 
interval, I saw him sniff at the pebble which 
lay at the bottom of his cage, before he 
remembered about it. 

Do you know the dingoes? They are an 
Australian wild-dog, I believe, and they have 
a seven-fold portion of the doggy spirit. In 
their eyes is the liquid pathos of the collie’s, 
the trustfulness of the retriever’s, the honor 
of the mastiff’s. Perhaps a dog’s eyes mean 
nothing to you, and if so, I am talking non- 
sense, as far as you are concerned, but if they 


138 


THE ZOO 


do, go and talk to the dingo, for he will 
show you what I mean. 

I go to the snake-house for purely moral 
reasons. I do not talk to the snakes, and I 
cannot feed them, because they have glass 
instead of wire in front of their dens; I go 
merely to look at what seems to me an 
embodiment of all that is low and hateful and 
mean; for the same reason I would go to look 
at the Devil, if he was on view, but as he is 
not, I find the snakes come most near my 
idea of him. 

It is possible to catch a snake’s eye. He 
will not look at you for long, but in one 
second of that glance you will get to know 
something of the eternal mystery of evil, 
which you will scarcely learn elsewhere. I 
cannot think of him as an animal, he is evil, 
no more. I once saw the snakes fed ; the pub- 
lic are no longer allowed to see it, and quite 
rightly. There were about a dozen people in 
the snake-house, at the time, and I think we 
were all silent as we went out, when the feed- 
ing was over. The snake I watched was a 
large python from South America — I cannot 
remember his name, and I have never been 
near the cage since — and he was given a live 
rat, for they will not eat the dead food. The 


THE ZOO 


139 


rat was let in through a small wire grating, 
and seemed quite at his ease at first, for the 
snake was asleep. He ran about the cage for 
a little while, and eventually walked across 
two of the reptile’s coils. At that moment 
the other opened his eyes and saw the rat. 
He was in no hurry, and stretched himself 
slowly. That was the most awful motion I 
ever saw; though the head and the end of the 
tail of the beast remained still, the great coils 
stirred and glided along one another, parallel 
lines moved in opposite directions, and passed 
and repassed silently and smoothly. 

The rat was still unconcerned, he was sit- 
ing in a corner, performing his last toilet, 
which was not worth while, and it was very 
pitiful. Presently he looked up, and saw that 
which made him drop on all-fours, and 
tremble. The snake had fully awoke, he 
was hungry and it was dinner time; two small 
eyes were looking towards the living meal 
.... it was horrible. 

It is many years since I saw that sight. It 
was, I think, the most terrifying thing I ever 
beheld. In sleep, the horror of it still some- 
times still reaches me. I am in a dim 
unfamiliar room, alone at first, but as I sit there, 
something wakes into existence which is hor- 


140 


THE ZOO 


rible, evil, not understood, and I cannot get 
away. 

But the creatures who know best the 
anguish of not being able to think, and the 
pain of frequent striving after thought, are 
the monkeys. And what makes their exist- 
ence so much sadder is that they are by nat- 
ure, as it were, philosophers, with the 
craving but not the power for thought, who 
somehow find themselves forced to play the 
role of low comedians. 

If you have ever watched the monkeys at 
play, you will know what I mean; light- 
hearted mischief is not their nature; the 
infinite sadness of their eyes is a contradiction 
to their gambols. They chase each other 
round the cage with anxious care-worn faces, 
muttering and scolding to themselves, and 
when they are tired they do not go to sleep 
contentedly like other animals; they sit down 
mournfully, and from their eyes looks forth a 
lost soul. Their existence comes near to 
being a problem to them, and thus they come 
near to being the saddest things on earth. 

I once saw a monkey at the Zoological 
Gardens, which I believe reached this bound- 
ary line between animals and man. Some 
one had put a small looking-glass in its cage, 


THE ZOO 


141 

and it stretched out a skinny arm, and began 
examining it. It was not good to eat, and it 
was just going to throw it away, when it 
caught sight of its own eyes in the glass. 
For one half second that monkey was more 
man than animal. It was puzzled at itself. 
I have seen many animals look at themselves 
in a glass, but none as that monkey did. A 
dog, for instance, will say to himself: “That’s 
a dog; how did it get there?” and I have 
known one run round behind a pier glass to 
find the dog. It is hard to make a cat see 
itself in a glass, but if does, it will paw the 
glass, and dismiss it from its mind. A parrot 
strikes its image with the upper part of its 
beak, using its head like a hammer, but it is 
not really interested. 

Now this monkey’s conduct was different 
in kind, not in degree, from that of all these 
other animals. It said: That is I; I am 
what? For one moment it stared and won- 
dered, in the next the animal had reasserted 
itself, and the only trace of its humanity 
left took the form, at the bidding of the 
animal, of fright and anger. It dashed the 
glass down, and ran away. 

Into that dim-lit brain there entered for a 
moment all the sadness of human life. The 


142 


THE ZOO 


problem of what we are lies at the root of all 
human anguish. If that was solved for us, we 
should all of us either find existence impos- 
sible or should discover in life a joy that would 
transcend all thought. 

We have creeds, as all mankind have had 
creeds, since the beginning of the world, all 
directed against that impregnable rock: 

‘ ‘What are we?’ * The whole puzzle of life, 
how we came here, where we are going, what 
is good, what is evil, all depend directly on 
that. A creed is a probability to many who 
do not believe it; to a few who do believe it, a 
certainty. Yet who has realized for the space 
of a lightning flash any creed, and has 
retained it as a creed? For a realized creed is 
no longer a creed, but an experience. 

But what of the monkey, who for one half 
second was a man? Has that flash of blind 
thought that glimmered into his small brain,- 
passed away as entirely as those hundred 
other flashes that did just not reach his dim 
narrow consciousness? Was that to him the 
supreme intellectual and spiritual effort of his 
life, a struggle, the tearing asunder of his 
normal limits of consciousness, a statement of 
that supremest mystery, self? I dare not say 
that it was, yet who dare say that it was not? 


THE ZOO 


143 


One mystery the more in this illimitable 
riddle of things, one more confession, “We 
cannot tell,” is no startling phenomenon. 

Yet that moment seems to have made no 
difference to the mokey. It is, I think, the 
most melancholy of all those sad prisoners; 
but the keeper tells me that it was never very 
lively. It has a curious way of looking earn- 
estly at people who visit the monkey house, 
and I have heard more than one person say: 
“What odd, sad eyes that monkey has.” 
But perhaps they would say that of all 
monkeys, if they looked at them. This one 
naturally attracts a good deal of attention. It 
has a blue face, and a tail with two green 
rings on it. 





THE THREE OLD LADIES 
















THE THREE OLD LADIES 


HAT the name of the three old ladies 



V V was, I never knew; the Christian name 
of one, I learned by implication, but I am 
quite possibly wrong about it, and of the 
Christian names of the others, or the surname 
of any, I have no idea. That they were sisters 
is fairly obvious. They all dressed quite alike, 
and very curiously; they were between sixty 
and seventy years of age, I should say, when 
I first saw them ; they lived together, and 
there was a strong family resemblance between 
them. Some people have faces which it is 
impossible to forget; the three old ladies, on 
the other hand, had faces which it was impos- 
sible to remember. If I saw any one of them 
now, dressed in an ordinary manner, some- 
where away from this town, and if she was 
sitting down, not walking — I think I know 
their walk; they all walked exactly alike — I 
do not suppose I should recognize her. 


1 48 THE THREE OLD LADIES 


They lived in a square, gloomy-looking 
house at the corner where one road met 
another. The house stood back a little way 
from the road, and a strip of damp, mouldy 
garden occupied the interval. From the fact 
that they passed my windows at about a 
quarter to eleven every morning, I conclude 
they usually went for a walk at half-past ten; 
but of their life at home, I know nothing 
whatever. 

In summer they were visible at a very long 
distance off. They walked in a row, holding 
their skirts very high. The result of this was 
that one saw the whole of six elastic-sided 
boots, occasional glimpses of six white stock- 
ings, and about two and a half feet of brilliant 
purple petticoat. One seldom sees real purple 
in this dingy world, and it is a most surprising 
color. It has a vividness that is quite incred- 
ible to those who have never seen it; a real 
purple object, so to speak, hits one in the face. 
This gave rise, in the instance with which we 
are concerned, to a curious optical delusion, 
which I have never got over. The three 
purple petticoats always appeared to me at a 
distance to be much nearer than their owners, 
who showed dimly behind them. They all 
wore straw bonnets, of a rather juvenile cut, 


THE THREE OLD LADIES 


149 


and smart black jackets. Their skirts were 
usually of a dull red color, which showed up 
the petticoats amazingly, and the petticoats 
themselves, I have omitted to say, had two 
large pieces of black braid running around the 
bottom, at the distance of about three inches 
apart. 

Such was the appearance of the three old 
ladies two years ago. On Saturday morning 
they always went to market, each carrying a 
discreet black basket. Their marketing lasted 
about two hours, and they returned home, 
past my window shortly after one. From the 
fact that a large lettuce poked its leaves out 
of one of the baskets, one Saturday morning, 
I conclude they had no kitchen garden. 

My house looks straight on to an un- 
frequented foot path, through which the three 
old ladies passed; and one morning as they 
were going out for their daily walk, one of 
them dropped a pocket handkerchief opposite 
my window. I tapped at the pane, and pointed 
to it as it lay 011 the ground. There was a 
hurried consultation between them, and the 
eldest, whose name I believe to have been 
Deborah, came back and picked it up. 

She glanced at my window nervously as 
she did so, dropped a little courtesy, and 


THE THREE OLD LADIES 


150 

rejoined the others. It was her youngest sister 
to whom the handkerchief belonged, and she 
gave it to her in a private and secret manner. 
It was obviously not quite proper .that she 
should go herself and pick up her handker- 
chief in sight of a strange gentle;nan who had 
made signs at her; for the eldest, the impro- 
priety was sensibly less. 

Whenever they passed, they seemed to be 
talking to each other in a polite and interested 
manner, but in low tones. But one morning 
after the marketing expedition, they returned 
more slowly than usual, and the second sister 
had given her arm to Deborah, while the 
youngest carried Deborah’s basket and her 
own. As they passed my window, the second 
sister said to Deborah: “You must keep very 
quiet, dear, for the rest of the day.” What 
wild antics Deborah usually indulged in, I do 
not know; I am sure however that they were 
strictly confined to the house. 

On Monday, for they did not go out walk- 
ing on Sunday, instead of seeing three figures 
pass my window, there were only two. 
Deborah was absent. But as the two sisters were 
able to leave her, I concluded there was noth- 
ing much the matter. Deborah was probably 
only keeping quiet. But next day they did 


THE THREE OLD LADIES 15 i 

not, I am pretty sure, pass my windows, nor 
all that week ; and on Saturday, in the town, I 
passed a servant girl carrying in her hand a 
market basket unquestionably belonging to 
one of the three old ladies. 

I suppose it was nearly a fortnight before I 
saw any of them again, and then there were, 
as you will have guessed, only two, and they 
wore rusty black crape on their jaunty straw 
bonnets, and their skirts were of the same 
color. But from force of habit, for the roads 
though dry were not dusty, they still held 
their skirts up, and the purple petticoats were, 
as usual, visible at an incredibly long distance. 
I thought they both looked older, and talked 
less than they had done when there were three 
of them. 

After that, things seemed to go on much as 
before; I met them once in a fruiterer’s shop, 
where they were buying, rather tremulously, 
a little bunch of white flowers. The elder of 
the two laid them tenderly on the top of some 
other purchases, and then took them out and 
asked for a piece of paper to wrap them in. 
Her hands trembled as she folded the paper 
round the flowers, and the other sister invested 
two shillings in a hideous little glass case of 
tin flowers with flaring green leaves. The 


152 


THE THREE OLD LADIES 


flowers were supposed to be snowdrops, and as 
they left the shop, the younger one whispered: 
“Deborah’s flowers, dear.” For this reason, 
I believe the eldest sister’s name to have been 
Deborah. 

Winter came early that year, and for many 
mornings together they did not pass my win- 
dows. Date one afternoon, however, as I was 
walking home, a cab passed me and drew up 
at the door of .their house, and the two old 
ladies got out. As I passed, I heard the elder 
one say to her sister: “It’ll be two miles from 

the cemetery ; shall we give him ’ ’ and the 

rest of the sentence was lost. 

There is to me something inexpressibly sad 
in these little things. If three old ladies 
lived together, it is certain that one will die 
first, and that two will be left; that they will 
continue to take their little walks together, 
and do their marketing on Saturday, as they 
used to, when there were three of them. Yet, 
yet, think of the tin snowdrops, and the silent 
drive to the cemetery; the empty, unused 
market basket; a purple petticoat laid by in a 
drawer. 

It is, I think, our protective feelings that 
revolt so strongly against this hideous neces- 
sity of death for others. I cannot think of 


THE THREE OLD LADIES 153 


the poor, old, timid lady going out into that 
dim immensity we call death, without a pas- 
sionate feeling of the cruel loneliness of the 
dark valley through which she has to pass. 
However strongly we believe in the presence 
of some spiritual guide, there comes that hour 
when the whole course of our being is checked, 
when all the rules and faint ideas that we have 
ever gathered are subverted, and we go out 
alone to find what the unknown has to give 
us. Yet, if the worst gift that death has in 
store for us is utter forgetfulness aud peace, a 
closing round of the grey limits of annihila- 
tion, we face nothing but what we long for. 
But it is very lonely. 

Before spring had come round again, the 
youngest of the three sisters had followed 
Deborah, and the second one alone remains. It 
is summer again now, and the purple petticoat 
is still to be seen on fine mornings, and on 
Saturdays the market basket makes its punc- 
tual appearance. She walks very slowly ; and 
yesterday I saw her resting in a greengrocer’s 
shop in the market place. The shop-boy was 
grinning undisguisedly at the purple petticoat, 
for much rain had fallen, and her skirt was 
gathered up higher than usual. Just as I 
came in, she looked up and saw him. 


154 


THE THREE OLD LADIES 


Whether she knew what he was laughing at, 
or not, I cannot say; but she got up from her 
seat and walked out of the shop, smoothing 
her skirt down over her petticoat with trem- 
bling hands. But economy conquered in the 
end, and when I caught her up on the road, a 
quarter of an hour later, it was flaring again 
as largely as ever. 

It will seem, I daresay, absurd to you, but 
I longed to tell her that she was not so much 
alone as she thought; that I wanted to carry 
her basket for her, to sit and read to her in 
the evening, or to box the ears of the shop- 
boy who had grinned at her purple petticoat. 
But it was impossible; it would not do. I 
could not have explained what I felt, and if I 
had she would not have understood me. 






LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 







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. 

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LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 


I WAS only fourteen years old when the 
Professor began to live here. The first 
time I saw him, I came to the conclusion that 
he was quite the most delightful person in the 
world. I had just returned home from school 
for the Christmas holidays, and the Professor 
was having tea in the drawing-room with my 
mother and father. He was quite an old man 
even then, and he wore spectacles and a 
brown velvet skull cap. But behind his 
spectacles I saw the kindest and brightest grey 
eyes that ever won a boy’s heart. I thought 
at the time it was curious that he seemed so 
extremely glad to see me, but it was equally 
mysterious that I was so extremely glad to see 
him. The likes and dislikes of children are 
unerring, wisdom is often acquired only by 
the sacrifice of instinct, and when instinct has 


i 5 8" 


LIKE A GRA MM A RIA N~ 


gone, appearance and manner, if artistic 
enough, must deceive the wisest; but in chil- 
dren, I do believe there is an unconscious 
instinctive knowledge which is never wrong. 

Anyhow, the Professor seemed to me to 
have been waiting for me, and wanting me to 
come; and to the Professor I went. He asked 
me questions about what I had been doing at 
school, and what work I liked best; and in- 
stead of replying in the usual formula which a 
boy uses when asked about such subjects, and 
saying, “I don’t know,” I soon found myself 
in a deep ethical discussion with him, as to 
whether there could have been any excuse for 
Achilles dragging Hector’s body round the 
walls of Troy, and what Helen felt when she 
saw Menelaus in the host of the Greeks. 

The worst of it was that the Professor was 
not often to be seen. From Monday morning 
till Saturday night he worked hard all day. 
Perhaps once a week he would go out to tea 
with one of his neighbors — it was on an occa- 
sion of this sort that I met him first — and he 
went for a walk every afternoon at half-past- 
one, returning punctually at half-past-two, 
and sometimes I caught sight of him passing 
our house during this hour,' while we sat at 
lunch. Otherwise, all I saw of him on week 


LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 


59 


days, was his side face as he sat at a large 
knee-hole table in his window, with the brown 
skull cap on, surrounded by books of refer- 
ence and piles of paper. He seldom drew 
down his blinds, and in the evening he could 
be seen in the same position, writing by a 
lamp with a green shade that cast a vivid 
light on his paper and his hand, but left the 
upper part of his body and his head in com- 
parative darkness. The first time I saw that, 
it gave me a sudden start. There was just 
that hand writing busily, and a circle of light 
round it, and it reminded me of the pictures 
thrown on a sheet by a magic lantern. One 
night, I remember waking suddenly from a 
childish nightmare, and groping about in ter- 
ror for the matches, feeling an irresistible need 
of light. I could not find them, and I stum- 
bled across to the window, for I saw by the 
clean shadows of its bars cast on to the blind, 
that there was a bright moon shining, and 
pulled it up. That was enough; there was 
light, and I stood looking out for a few min- 
utes. My room was at the top of the house, 
facing the road, looking straight on to the 
Professor’s study, and there in his window I 
saw the circle of light and the busy hand mov- 
ing about among books and papers. In sud- 


160 LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 

den wonder, I felt my way back to bed, fished 
my watch out from under the pillow, and took 
it to the window to see what time it was. It 
was just a quarter past two. I drew down the 
blind and got back into bed again, feeling 
soothed by the consciousness that the Profes- 
sor was awake. 

The Professor was Scotch, with strong Sab- 
batarian principles, so that it was on Sunday 
that I saw him most. Every afternoon he 
would come in to see if there was anyone 
inclined fora walk with him, and I remember 
feeling very glad if there was no one at home, 
who cared to go except myself, for I wanted to 
have the Professor alone. One Sunday, in 
those same holidays, it began to snow heavily 
just after lunch, and I sat dismally in the win- 
dow, thinking that I should not get my walk 
with him, when I heard his front gate clang, 
and the boot-boy came across with a note in 
his hand. The servant was some little time 
in answering the bell, and I impatiently went 
down stairs to answer it myself. The note 
was addressed to me, and contained an invita- 
tion to come across to his house, and “amuse 
him for an hour or two, ” for he had a cold and 
could not go out. I snatched up a cap from 
the hall-table, ran across the road, and found 


LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 161 

myself obliged to wait a cold minute on his 
doorstep, while the boot-boy went around and 
opened the door for me. 

It was on that day that I learned, with a 
vague feeling of sadness, what it was that 
kept the Professor’s hand so busy in that circle 
of light on his table. He was compiling a 
dictionary of Greek Mythology, which was to 
be exhaustive and final. The table was 
crowded with books of reference, and in the 
drawers were neatly docketed papers, covered 
with the most minute and exquisite hand-writ- 
ing, containing finished articles. On the table 
was a small sheaf of papers headed “Demeter,” 
and one sentence I remember caught my eye: 
“We have seen that the twelve labors of 
Hercules are only to be explained as a solar 
myth, and applying the same tests as before, 
we shall find that the legend of Demeter”— 
the rest I have forgotten, but those words 
remained in my memory with great vividness, 
though I could not understand them. 

I always look back to that afternoon, in 
spite of the Dictionary of Greek Mythology, as 
one of supreme happiness. The Professor 
gave me a big arm chair to sit in, and told me 
the most wonderful stories, and showed me his 
Angora cat, who questioned me with deep 


162 


LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 


topaz eyes, and finally decided that I could be 
trusted, rolled herself up in a great silky ball 
on my knee, and purred like five tea kettles. 
That is the most exquisite compliment an ani- 
mal can pay us, for it measures everything 
by its own sense of security. I feel I would 
give anything to remember what the Professor 
said, to see once more, though only for a 
moment, his kind, grey eyes — but whenever we 
are happy in a receptive, contemplative manner, 
our recollections are always atmospheric, not 
incidental, and I only know that that after- 
noon has still a halo in my memory, and is a 
recollection of tranquil happiness. 

But in the evening, when I went up to bed, 
I thought of the stacks of paper, the great 
books on his table, and the busy tired hand 
creeping on and on over the white plains, and 
again that vague sadness stole over me. Boy 
as I was, I felt a dumb anger, for which I 
could find no words, against the Dictionary of 
Greek Mythology, which occupied the Pro- 
fessor so continuously from Monday morning 
till Saturday night. Somehow it seemed to 
me that he was sacrificing something to it, 
which no man could afford or ought to afford 
to sacrifice; and I had long half- waking dreams 
in which the Dictionary of Greek Mythology 


LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 163 

appeared as a grey statue covered with minute 
writing with blank unseeing eyes, and the 
Professor was trying to convince me that I had 
much better be a solar myth than an ordinary 
human boy, which filled me with a passionate 
feeling of protest. 

After those Christmas holidays, I did not 
see the Professor again for five or six years. 
My father had come into an estate in a distant 
part of the country, and we moved there. 
Nov/ and then he wrote to me, but his letters 
said little more than that he hoped he would 
finish his work before he died; but one morn- 
ing, when I was at home, I received a letter 
which I had long feared to receive. 

“I have been unwell,” he wrote, “and the 
doctor tells me I want a change of air, and a 
complete holiday. Just now, that is impos- 
sible for me, as I cannot leave home before I 
have finished the piece of work I am at. But 
I wish you could come and see me; bring some 
of your work with you, as I shall be very 
busy. It is not a very tempting invitation, 
but do come. I have been obliged to stop 
writing in the evenings now, but I really can 
see to the end of the whole work. My dear 
boy, I do hope you will come: there are things 
I want to talk over with you, and I feel very 


164 


LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 


lonely sitting here in the evening unable to 
work. ’ ’ 

My hatred of the Dictionary of Greek Myth- 
ology was strong upon me; that grey old 
phantom which was forcing him to terminate 
a hermit’s life by a suicide’s death. But it 
was very pathetic. Of course T went, and 
found him changed and aged. The drawers 
of the knee-hole table were quite full now, 
and a new deal shelf had been put up on the 
wall behind, already half full of those destruc- 
tive little packets of paper. He had paid a 
heavy price for them. 

All that afternoon I sat with him, arguing, 
entreating. Even from his own point of view, 
it was folly to work just now. Given a month’s 
rest, he could come back more able to work, 
for a tired brain cannot give birth to vigorous 
offspring. 

The doctor came early in the evening, with 
that cheerful professional manner which is so 
dismal on some occasions. 

“You must make him leave all this behind,” 
he said to me. “Take him to the sea and 
build sand castles together. But I am afraid 
you’ll find him very obstinate and hard to 
persuade.” 

I followed him out into the hall. 


LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 165 

“What is the real state of the case?” I 
asked. 

“If he would go away at once,” he said, 
“ he might recover. But I would not be cer- 
tain even of that.” 

“Recover? ” 

“ His brain has broken down,” said he. “He 
looks a little better today; but some days he 
will sit for hours with his books in front of 
him, and when I come in, he says that they 
are upside down, and asks me to put them 
straight for him. Yes; very sad; simply 
from overstrain. But as long as he has lucid 
intervals — he is quite himself this evening — 
there is a hope of recovery, if he would only go 
away and rest.” 

When I went back into his room, I found 
him sitting at his writing table, as I had seen 
him six years ago from the street outside, with 
the light full on his paper and on one white 
thin hand. He looked up as I entered and said: 

“I am so much better this evening, I feel 
as if I could finish the article on Pluto. Let’s 
see, where was I ? ” — and he again relapsed 
into a silence broken only by the faint scratch- 
ing of his pen as it traveled along the endless 
sheets of paper, and the occasional reference 
to one of the books round him. 


LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 


1 66 

I sat down in the arm-chair by the fire, and 
read a book. An hour passed, two hours, and 
it was already after twelve, when I heard a low 
moan from where he was sitting. He was 
turning rapidly over the leaves of an old musty 
folio, and as I got up out of my chair to go to 
him, he laid it down with a sigh. 

“I can’t understand it,” he murmured, “I 
don’t know what language it’s written in.” 

I laid my hand gently on his shoulder. 

“Come, old friend,” I said, “you have been 
doing too much. It is after twelve, you had 
better go to bed, you will be fresher in the 
morning. ” 

He got up very quietly and came across the 
room. Close to the door was a high book- 
case, and as we passed it, he suddenly took 
a book at random from a shelf and opened it. 

“No, it is no use,” he said, “I can’t under- 
stand it.” 

He put it back on the shelf, and stood there 
for a moment, looking wistfully at the books. 
Then he raised his hand to them, and stroked 
their backs, with a loving but puzzled air. 

/ ‘How is it I can’t understand them ? ” he 
said. “They mean nothing to me. Well, 
well, when I am better, I shall be able to read 
them again; I think I shall be better soon.” 


LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 167 

For the next three days he was very quiet. 
I persuaded him to leave his writing at least 
once a day, and come for a stroll with me in 
the warm soft air. Spring was bursting out 
in all its fulness, and morning by morning in 
the row of elms in front of my window, some 
fresh tree stood enveloped in a sweet green 
mist of early leaves. Once as we came in he 
stopped at the house opposite, where we used 
to live, and said to me: 

“Do you remember asking me whether 
Achilles had any right to drag Hector’s body 
round the walls ? That was the first time I 
saw you; you had just come back from school. 
And then there came a snowy Sunday, when 
you sat with me at home. 1 had just got as 
far as Demeter then.” 

After that day he got very much worse. 
The puzzled look in his eyes, which I dreaded 
to see, was always there. He would stretch 
out his hands very piteously, as if he was blind, 
and all night he would keep talking to him- 
self, saying he had not much time; and one 
morning they found him lying very quiet, 
when they went to awake him, and the puz- 
zled look had gone from his eyes and the grop- 
ing hands were at rest. 

He had often spoken to me about the publi- 


LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 


1 68 

cation of his work; it was that mainly for 
which he wished to have me with him ; and 
after his death I sent it all to a friend of mine, 
who had made a special study of the subject, 
and was considered the best living authority 
on it. But it was as I feared; the Professor’s 
work was altogether antiquated ; it was patient, 
laborious, honest, all that good work should 
be, but perfectly useless. 

I do not think I realized the enormous 
pathos of his whole life, until I heard that. 
Those long hours, the ungrudged, unremit- 
ting toil, the loneliness, the failure of power, 
they were lost, unrewarded ; but it was the 
other loss that seems to me most pitiful. 
That one as delicately sensitive, as unerringly 
sympathetic as he, should have known noth- 
ing of this “warm kind world,” should have 
lived in the ashes of dead fables, falsely recon- 
structed; it was this that seemed so hopeless. 
Even if his work had been supremely success- 
ful, if he had shown the way, not followed the 
old abandoned grass-grown road that led 
nowhere, even then would it have been worth 
while ? Even had he throned Zeus for ever 
on an eternally appropriate throne, and ana- 
lyzed Athene from the top of her helmet to 
the tail feathers of the owl that sits at her feet, 


LIKE A GRAMMARIAN 


169 


would it have been w T ortli the sacrifice, for he 
weighed the world against it, and found it 
wanting ? lyife is given us that we may live, 
and that we may know, and is not only a space 
of time allotted to learn in. But for the gen- 
tle, there is surely a gentle school, and for the 
loving, somewhere and somehow, love. Even 
if it were not so, at any rate he lies now in a 
very peaceful place, on no rock-summit, but 
in what seems to me a more appropriate coun- 
try, in a quiet, green churchyard, where trees 
whisper and lean together, facing a southern 
sea, where snow and storm seldom come, 
where he will learn to be still, and where his 
sleep will be sound, for he was very tired. 











POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD 









V 




































































POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD 


T HE intelligent foreigner who happened to 
ask his hostess who that quiet, nice 
looking girl was, whom he saw at lunch but 
not at dinner, would in nine cases out of ten 
be told that it was “only the governess.” 
Governesses usually only appear at lunch, 
they have their breakfast with the children, 
and of course “one cannot have one’s govern- 
ess down to dinner.” If you ask why, you 
will be told that it is quite impossible. 

I was staying the other day with a certain 
Mrs. Naseby, whose father as we all know was 
a successful soap-boiler in Liverpool. She 
was the only child; she had an enormous for- 
tune, and in course of time was sacrificed on 
the altar of younger sons, and is now an hon- 
orable, and will probably be a countess before 
she dies, as her husband’s elder brother has no 


74 


POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD 


children, and is rapidly drinking himself to 
death. The effect of all this is, that she is 
aristocratic to the tips of her finger-nails, and 
is quite unconscious of her governess > pres- 
ence. 

Personally I always make a point of talk- 
ing to governesses, because nobody else ever 
talks to them. Our acquaintance began at 
lunch. I came in rather late, on the first day 
on which I was there, and saw that there were 
two places vacant. One of these was some 
way off, at the other end of the table, but I 
had reason for choosing it. 

Naturally I had two neighbors, one was a 
pretty child of about twelve years old, who 
inherits all her mother’s beauty — nobody has 
ever thought of saying that Mrs. Naseby is 
not wonderfully handsome — the other was a 
woman of about thirty, dressed quite irre- 
proachably in a gown of a sober hue. Govern- 
esses, like footmen, are obliged to be irre- 
proachably dressed, when they appear in public 
for like footmen, they are part of the house- 
hold, which reflects creditably or discredit- 
ably on the hostess. 

There are certain Madonnas, in which you 
will find no idealized beauty; the mother of 
God is a simple peasant woman, with a sweet, 


POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD 


175 


patient face, a face such as the grave, serious 
artists of old must often have seen in their 
quiet Italian villages. They are evidently 
drawn from the life, and I imagine from 
women to whom life was a dim ever-present 
responsibility, for the explanation they were 
willing to wait, and in the meantime to go 
about their small repeated duties with resig- 
nation and perhaps cheerfulness. Such a 
habit of life produces a very distinct type of 
face, and the woman next to whom I sat was 
a good representative of it. These faces are 
not often noticed, and there are more of them 
than we think, for they have no beauty of line 
or color, they are only very patient and very 
sweet, and sweetness and patience are at a dis- 
count just now. 

Her eyes — but nobody is supposed to notice 
that a governess has eyes — were of that partic- 
ular shade of grey which, as the Irish say so 
well, look as if they had been put in with a 
smutty finger. About her neck she wore a 
string of olive-wood beads, which had that 
peculiarly dowdy appearance which is com- 
mon in trophies from the Holy L,and. She 
had a submissive, attentive air, which is char- 
acteristic of governesses, and she was eating a 
slice of hot boiled beef, with carrots, turnips, 


1 76 POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD 

and a suet dumpling. It is possible to con- 
ceive a foreigner so intelligent as to remark 
that there is a diet which indicates a governess 
as clearly as her quiet, submissive manner. It 
has often been noticed that governesses like 
black currants, and the remark is profoundly 
true. Why they like black currants, is hard 
to explain but easy to perceive. It is simply 
part of that eternal fitness, which strings the 
events of this world together like the beads 
which governesses wear round their necks. 
Boiled beef is equally characteristic, especially 
with suet dumpling, and so also is cake, partic- 
ularly seed-cake. It is worth while to eat 
seed-cake and drink water just once, when you 
have finished the sweet course at lunch ; for if 
you do that, in a receptive spirit, you will 
learn something about the position of govern- 
esses which it is hard to know from outside, 
as it were, from mere observation, or instruc- 
tion. The spirit, as we know, is accessible 
through the “subtle gateways of the body,” 
and seed-cake and cold water produce their 
definite ethical effect, just as brandy, haschish 
or opium. 

There was no black currant tart or black 
currant pudding at lunch, but there was a 
sago pudding, and the governess took some. 


POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD 177 

As she helped herself to it, she accidently 
knocked a wine-glass off the table, which 
crashed in pieces on the floor, and there was a 
moment’s silence. 

Mrs. Naseby looked np, saw what had hap- 
pened, and said in audible tones: 

“Very awkward.” 

The poor governess began to murmur some 
apology, but I gave myself the pleasure of 
interrupting her. 

‘ ‘I am so sorry , Mrs. Naseby, I am afraid 
I have broken one of your glasses. ’ * 

Mrs. Naseby had beautiful manners. She 
took my word for it, and smiled gracefully. 

“I don’t think I shall forgive you,” she 
said. ‘ ‘I shall stop your pocket-money. ’ ’ 

The governess turned a submissive eye 
towards me. Her lips moved, but the words 
were inaudible. A slight blush had spread 
over her face, but it was a hot day, and it may 
only have been the effect of stooping down to 
pick up the fragments of the wine-glass. The 
footman does not pick things up for the 
governess. 

As ill-luck would have it, there was sitting 
opposite to me, a certain Miss Grantham, to 
whom I had expounded that morning some of 
my views on the position of governesses. She 


1 78 POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD 


caught my eye, smiled maliciously, and took 
a custard from the tray which a footman was 
handing. Then she turned to the man and 
said, “I am so very much obliged to you.” 

The footman was too well bred to stare, and 
passed on. 

The governess did not hear, and con- 
sequently the shot fell harmless. 

But Miss Grantham did not intend to be 
balked of her scene. She had a morbid 
craving for small scenes, which made other 
people rather uncomfortable. With her most 
winning air she addressed the governess 
directly. 

“Edith tells me you are doing the first canto 
of the ‘Faerie Queene’ with her, Miss Hun- 
tingford. I am so fond of the ‘Faerie Queene. ’ 
What a treat for both of you. I wish you 
would allow me to read it with you some 
morning. How one longs for the age of chiv- 
alry to return. It is so rare in these horrible 
fin de siecle days. ’ ’ 

That shot went home. Miss Huntingford 
was not wise, she was not even foolish, and 
either quality would have been sufficient. But 
she was only sensible and sensitive. Con- 
sequently she blushed more deeply, and drank 
a little water. 


POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD 179 

“I’m sure I should be very glady’ she mur- 
mured. 

The unusual sound of a voice that has not 
been heard before, caused one or two people 
to stop talking and look up. Miss Grantham 
went on with an infernal sweetness of manner, 
unable to deny herself the pleasure of making 
a scene even at the expense of a governess. 

“I never thought the age of chivalry was 
really over,” she said, addressing me directly. 
“I know it’s the fashion to say that it’s a lost 
virtue or vice, whichever it may be. But it 
certainly has dwindled, though, of course, you 
see isolated instances of chivalry now and 
then. Why has it dwindled so? Are women 
less.charming than they used to be, or are men 
less susceptible?’ ’ 

“Chivalry defends women from men,” I 
said. “The age in which it was needed has 
passed. What there is room for and need for, 
is a new chivalry which will defend women 
from women.” 

“How interesting,” said Miss Grantham. 
“Yes, I daresay you are right. You mean, 
that you can’t expect chivalry to flourish 
when women treat women as no man would 
think of doing. ’ ’ 

“Exactly,” said I. “But there never yet 


i8o POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD 


was a chivalrous woman. I don’t suppose 
there ever will be. They defend their own 
sex, when the attack is general, but they never 
defend an individual.” 

Miss Grantham never got angry. I had put 
myself at a great disadvantage, or the govern- 
ess at a greater. 

She laughed. 

“I didn’t know you were so well up in the 
subject, ’ ’ she said. “So men are still chivalrous 
to women. I wonder how long it will last.” 

She picked up a claret glass, and deliber- 
ately snapped the stem in half. There was 
again a sudden silence, and Mrs.. Naseby 
looked up enquiringly. 

“Well?” said Miss Grantham, addressing 
me. 

I did not answer her, and she laughed 
again. 

“The habit of breaking things is infectious,” 
she said to Mrs. Naseby, “and the age of chiv- 
alry is over. It stopped about half-a-minute 
ago.” 

There was a great laugh from Miss Gran- 
tham’s immediate neighbors, who had followed 
the scene from the beginning, and as lunch 
was over, Mrs. Naseby collected eyes, and the 
people dispersed. 


POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD 181 


I happened to be the last to leave the din- 
ing room, and the governess was standing in 
the hall. 

“Thank you very much,” she said, “for 
trying to shield me, but I wish you hadn’t 
done it.” And she went hurriedly upstairs. 

When I went into the drawing-room, Miss 
Grantham was giving her mother and Mrs. 
Naseby a moderately accurate account of what 
had happened. 

“It’s too delicious,” the latter was saying. 

‘ ‘Really a very pretty piece of fence. ” 

She gave a little gush of laughter. 

“Here is the squire of distressed dames,” 
said Miss Grantham, as I entered. 

“It really is very funny,” said Mrs. Naseby. 
“But why wouldn’t you do the same for 
Norah?” 

“Because I’tn not a distressed dame,” said 
Miss Grantham. “Isn’t it so?” 

“Of course,” I said. “But you were very 
cruel to her. ’ ’ 

“Really it is very funny, ” said Mrs. Naseby. 
“We are a lady short. Shall I tell her to come 
down to dinner? What’s her name, by-the- 
way? She only came yesterday.” 

“Edith told me, ” said Miss Grantham, “it’s 
Miss Huntingford. ” 


182 POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD 


At any rate governesses have, as a rule, one 
consolation. Their business is to look after 
children, who may be thoughtless and trouble- 
some, but are probably still child-like. Half 
the time, at any rate, they live in an atmos- 
phere which is not vitiated, a sort of oasis, in 
this wilderness of those who do not care. But 
Miss Huntingford had not even that solace. 
Edith was twelve years old, but a woman of 
the world. She wished to be treated as if she 
was grown up; she did not care for fairy stories; 
they seemed to her to be most improbable, as 
indeed they are. She used) to go to the pan- 
tomime at Christmas, but she always came 
away before the harlequinade. She spoke 
French very well, almost as well as Miss Hun- 
tingford, and her musical tastes lay in the 
direction of Wagner. She was altogether quite 
up to date. Poor Miss Huntingford! Even 
some one with the best intentions in the world, 
had done something “she wished he hadn’t.” 

Miss Grantham always smoked cigarettes 
after lunch. We went down to a lake in front 
of the house until the day got a little cooler, 
and she sat on a pile of cushions in a broad 
flat-bottomed punt, and made cynical remarks. 
Her silver cigarette case was in an insecure 
position on the edge of the boat; her face was 


POOR MISS HUNTINGFORD 183 

turned away from it, and as she felt for it with 
her hand, she manag ed to knock it off into the 
deep water. It was no use quarreling with 
her. 

4 ‘I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid I’ve 
knocked your cigarette case over-board. ’ ’ 













THE DEFEAT OF LADY GRANTHAM 



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THE DEFEAT OF LADY GRAN- 
THAM 


S IR ROBERT GRANTHAM’S house in 
London has a garden attached to it of 
sufficient size to enable Lady Grantham to 
give garden parties. Her duties as a hostess 
on these occasions are limited to sitting under 
the charming cedar tree which stands just 
behind the house, and making scornful 
remarks to her guests. However, the affa- 
bility of Sir Robert is universally acknowl- 
edged to be enough for two. Lady Grantham 
is Spanish by birth, and dislikes English peo- 
ple. I got there rather late, and the guests 
were beginning to go. The remainder were 
grouped together round Sir Robert, who was 
pointing out to them the superiority of his 
garden to all others in London, not by praising 
his own, but by depreciating the rest. 

“I don’t know what I should do without a 


1 88 DEFEAT OF LADY GRANTHAM 


bit of a garden where I can sit and smoke a 
cigar of an evening,” he was just saying. “I 
often wonder why any one ever comes up to 
London, if they have to live in a stuffy house 
like a barrack, with no garden attached, or a 
garden like Lord Orme’s. I often say to him, 
‘Now my dear fellow, why on earth don’t you 
buy up those two houses next you, and run a 
wall along from the corner? You’d get quite 
a decent little garden if you did that, whereas 
now you’ve scarcely got room enough to 
smoke a cigarette. ’ ’ ’ 

Lady Grantham was sitting as usual under 
her cedar tree reading her French novel, and 
Miss Grantham, who had found it impossible 
to talk to people any longer, apart from the 
fact that her father was addressing everyone 
who remained collectively, was sitting by her, 
and eating strawberries with an absent air. 
Lady Grantham looked up vindictively as I 
approached. “You are very late,” she said. 
“It is such wretched manners to come just as 
everyone else is just going away, and your 
hostess wants to go too. It is far better not to 
come at all, unless you can manage to come in 
decent time.” 

The only sensible way of treating Lady 
Grantham is to take your cue from her. If 


DEFEAT OF LADY GRANTHAM 189 


she is not rude, there is no reason why you 
should be; if she is, there is no reason why 
you should not. Besides we are old friends. 

“I didn’t come to talk to you,” I said. 
“Please go away if you want. Or go on with 
your book if you like. You must have read a 
good deal this afternoon; you always read at 
your own parties, I believe.” 

Lady Grantham smiled. 

“Nora will talk to you, if you want to talk,” 
she said. “Talk, Nora.” 

“What shall we talk about, ” said Miss Gran- 
tham. “Have some strawberries. Oh, by-the- 
way, do you remember Miss Huntingford last 
year at the Nasebys ’ ? You were very chival- 
rous to her on that occasion I remember.” 

“Yes, I remember. She’s married.” 

“That is what I was just going to tell you. 
How did you know ? ” 

“It’s no secret, I imagine, I saw her the 
other day. ” 

“She married the eldest Naseby. Her dear 
mother-in-law is furious.” 

Lady Grantham looked up. 

“Do you mean the governess, Nora?” 

“Yes, the one who broke the wine glass.” 

“It serves that woman right. I told her so 
this afternoon.” 


1 9 o DEFEAT OF LADY GRANTHAM 


“I have no doubt you did.” I gave myself 
the satisfaction of saying. 

‘ ‘She used to have her down to the drawing 
room to play after dinner,” continued Lady 
Grantham. “Now I always keep my governess 
in" her proper place.” 

“You treat her like an under housemaid, as 
far as I remember,” I said. 

“You’d better not say much more, mother,” 
said Miss Grantham. “He’s got a passion for 
governesses.” 

“That’s not quite true,” said I, “only I 
don’t see why they should be treated like 
servants. ” 

Lady Grantham yawned. 

“Why should we talk about governesses?” 
she said. 

“Well, you will have to talk to a governess 
soon, I expect,” remarked Miss Grantham. 

“Why?” 

“Well, to an ex-governess; Mrs. Naseby 
told me she was coming when I saw her this 
morning.” 

“Why did you ask her?” 

“You told me to; you went down to Ascot 
on Harry Naseby’ s coach last week, you 
know. ” 

“I shall send for Miss Toots to talk to her,” 


DEFEAT OF LADY GRANTHAM 191 

said Lady Grantham. “Those people are 
much happier with their own class. They 
can talk about French exercises.” 

“I met Mrs. Henry Naseby the other day,” 
I said, “she is very charming, and she has 
caught the trick of the world. I advise you 
to take care.” 

Sir Robert’s party had begun to drift back 
towards the cedar, which, as he was careful to 
point out to them, was quite the finest tree of 
its sort in London, and had been planted by 
the first Lord Sandown, who, as all the world 
knew, and if they didn’t he told them, was the 
founder of the family, and had been ennobled 
in the reign of Charles I. By degrees the 
remainder of the guests began to move, and 
there were only three beside myself left on the 
lawn, when a footman came out followed by 
a woman whom I scarcely recognized. 

Mrs. Naseby was perhaps even more per- 
fectly dressed than Lady Grantham herself, 
and that is saying a great deal. She walked 
as if she had been stared at all her life, and 
rather enjoyed it. I had only met her 
once since her marriage, and that several 
months ago, and though it was clear that she 
was learning the trick pretty quickly, I was 
not prepared for this transformation. 


1 92 DEFEAT OF LADY GRANTHAM 


She lounged up to the cedar where we were 
sitting, bowed to me as if she ought to remem- 
ber me but just did not, with that sublime 
self-possession which I had always imagined 
a thing which some were born with, but to be 
as unattainable as the line of aristocratic 
ancestors with which it is usually coupled. 
Then apparently for the first time she caught 
sight of Lady Grantham, who did not offer 
to rise. 

“Ah, dear Lady Grantham,” she said, <C I 
really did not see you before. You are so right 
to keep quiet, and not stand about in the way 
most of us think it necessary to do when we 
receive our friends. I know how trying a 
hostess’ duties are. And how do you do, Sir 
Robert. What a charming garden you have! 
I always tell everyone it is quite the best in 
London, and they always tell me that they 
knew that already.” 

Mrs. Naseby drew off a long glove medi- 
tatively. 

“I remember so well meeting you at my 
mother-in-law’s,’ ’ she continued, turning to 
Lady Grantham again, “but of course you 
would not remember me. ’ ’ 

“No, one necessarily sees very little of the 
governess,” remarked Lady Grantham. 


DEFEAT OF LADY GRANTHAM 193 


It was quite clear that Mrs. Naseby remem- 
bered Rady Grantham, and I waited for more. 

“So dreadfully close, is it not, this after- 
noon,” she went on; “I was really afraid 
that I should not get here at all, but your 
beautiful garden is the only cool place I have 
been in for days. You are not thinking of 
selling it, I suppose, Sir Robert? I should 
simply make Harry buy it, if you were. How 
I shall survive tonight I really do not 
know. Prince Waldenech is dining with us, 
and we’ve got a party afterwards. So sorry 
I couldn’t include you at dinner, Rady Gran- 
tham, but you know what a polky little dining- 
room we have.” 

Henry Naseby had one of the largest houses 
in Rondon, and a new and magnificent dining- 
room, which would hold eighty people com- 
fortably, and Rady Grantham knew it, and 
Mrs. Naseby knew she knew it, and everybody 
else knew they both knew it. 

Mrs. Naseby waited for a moment with a 
true artistic instinct and then continued. 

< ‘But I hope you can manage to look in on 
us afterwards. Do you know the Prince? Of 
course he is quite an old friend of ours.” 

Rady Grantham shut her book and cleared 
for action. 


i 9 4 DEFEAT OF LADY GRANTHAM 


“Is he really? I should not have thought 
you would have known him long. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Naseby laughed. 

“Of course I cannot say that I am an old 
friend of his judging simply by the number of 
years I have known him. He is a compatriot 
of yours, is he not, Lady Grantham? You 
have known him twenty or thirty years? More 
than that I dare say. How I envy you! Such 
a charming man!” 

Lady Grantham had to explain herself. She 
did so with a direct lucidity which is all her 
own. 

“Your paths in life have not always been on 
the same level, ” she said. “That was all I 
meant. But perhaps he came up to the nur- 
sery when your husband was still small enough 
to be in your charge and used to pat him on 
the head. Was he a troublesome little boy? I 
suppose he must have been. All little boys 
are troublesome it seems to me. I think we 
owe so much to our governesses who kindly 
take charge of them for us till they are old 
enough to go to school. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Naseby received the thrust with perfect 
composure. 

“Yes, I think governesses are owed a great 
deal. You, dear Lady Grantham, can form 


DEFEAT OF LADY GRANTHAM 195 

no conception liow odious small children, even 
the most delightful of their kind, can be. It’s 
true that Harry is in my charge now — -I feel 
the responsibility of it very much. But as a 
a matter of fact he takes care of me. It is so 
delightful to have a husband whose long 
experience of the world saves one from all 
snares and pitfalls. It makes me feel quite a 
little girl again.” 

L,ady Grantham knew perfectly well that 
Mrs. Naseby was her husband’s senior, and 
she was not the woman to scruple to say so. 

“Yes, of course he has been in the world— 
his world, my world, longer than you. You 
would not have come out, would you, until 
you married? I quite envy you the freshness 
of your impressions; it must be so interesting 
to know that other side of life. I always make 
my maid gossip to me in the evening when 
she is doing my hair. But how very stupid, 
if you will excuse my saying so, of your 
mother-in-law. She assured me that you 
were older than he. No doubt she exagger- 
ated, for she was speaking with Some bitter- 
ness. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Naseby laughed charmingly. 

“Really, Sir Robert, I am quite sorry for 
you. What an inquisition to have in the 


1 96 DEFEAT OL LADY GRANTHAM 


house! We are all so dreadfully afraid of Lady 
Grantham, you know. I shall have to warn 
the Prince against her. She will be saying 
all sorts of awful things to him, asking him 
his age and the Princess’ age, and he will 
scold me dreadfully for having asked her at all. 
You will come, won’t you, Lady Grantham? 
But wasn’t it rude of her? Really, I quite 
long to be a governess again, in order to make 
you stand in the corner for being so rude. ’ ’ 

Lady Grantham very seldom laughed, and 
laughter alone could have saved her. There 
are certain remarks which to ignore is to 
acknowledge. 

She sat quite still for a moment, and an 
angry flush rose to her face. Sir Robert who 
was always getting the worst of it with his 
wife entirely declined to come to her assistance. 
She turned to Norah. 

‘‘Send for Miss Toots,” she said. 

Then to Mrs. Naseby. 

“I am sure you would like to see my 
governess. You can compare experiences. 
She is an excellent woman, and you probably 
have much more in common with her than 
you have with me. ’ ’ 

“That is very likely,” said Mrs. Naseby. 
“I always tell everyone how kind you are, 


DEFEA T OF LADY GRANTHAM 197 


Lady Grantham, and how thoughtful for your 
guests; but, as you say, two Englishwomen 
must have much more to say to each other, 
than an Englishwoman and a foreigner. Do 
let Miss Toots come to us tonight. She is 
very pretty, I hear, and the dear Prince is a 
great admirer of English beauty. ’ ’ 

Lady Grantham retreated in good order, 
but she distinctly retreated. I was delighted, 
and had a pitched battle with her on the next 
occasion that we met, and on parting, wondered 
whether Mrs. Naseby would, for a considera- 
tion, give lessons in the noble art of self- 
defence. 
















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THE TRAGEDY OF A GREEN TOTEM 


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THE TRAGEDY OF A GREEN 
TOTEM 



‘OTEMISM is a form of belief common to 


-A. most savage nations. Like other primi- 
tive notions the principles of it are simple and 
intelligible. The totem is a tribal god who 
is embodied in an animal, a man, or sometimes 
a plant. He protects his tribe, and though 
naturally he may be of a venemous disposi- 
tion, he will not hurt them. Thus a tribe 
whose totem is a snake, do not experience any 
ill effects when that particular snake bites 
them, in fact it is rather an honor than other- 
wise. Totems are regarded with great vene- 
ration, as being the embodiment of the god, 
and they are sometimes solemnly eaten, in 
order that their worshippers may share their 
attributes ; a totem dog for instance will confer 
speed, a totem lion, courage. Difficulties, how- 
ever, may arise in this connection, for if the 


202 TRAGEDY OF A GREEN TOTEM 


totem is a very edible beast, his sacred char- 
acter is somewhat inconvenient. The totem 
of an American Indian tribe is an ox, and its 
tribesmen are not vegetarians. So they kill 
their ox and get beef in the ordinary way; but 
they stuff the skin afterwards, and pretend 
that the ox is not dead, and then they all go 
to the stuffed ox, and say, “Pm sure I beg 
your pardon.” Thus they have beef for sup- 
per, without offending their god. The pro- 
ceeding has the merit of ingenuity and sim- 
plicity. A tribe whose totem was a potato 
would live in a chronic state of apology. 

Savages and children have much in com- 
mon. If all children were left without any 
religious instruction, I believe in a few gene- 
rations the Totemistic age would return. Jack, 
for instance, had a series of totems, of which 
the greatest, the last, and the best was the 
Green Totem. 

The Green Totem was not green at all in 
its primitive state, being of a bright brick-red 
color, but in its final, and as mythologists 
would say, its crystallized state — though it 
never was crystallized, except once, when it fell 
into a pond, and was frozen in for a fortnight, 
after which it was fished out in a sodden and 
not a crystallized state — it was bright pea 


TRAGEDY OF A GREEN TOTEM 203 


green. During the period of crystallization it 
was inaccessible, and though we could see it 
like a bee in amber, in the ice, yet when it got 
free again it was, as I say, sodden. 

But during the primitive or brick-red stage, 
it was not a totem at all, but either Mrs. 
Noah, or one of the Misses Noahs, or perhaps 
Noah himself, though I think he had a beard, 
or Shem, Ham or Japhet. I take it that it 
began to be a Totem at the moment when 
Jack partook of it, for it had been divine 
before, and at that moment it also ceased to 
be brick-red, and became pea green, because 
the brick-red was water color. The pea green, 
as far as I know, was permanent. 

On the whole, then, the Green Totem is the 
least misleading title. 

I remember the passing of Mrs. Noah, Miss 
Noah, Shem, Ham or Japhet, into the Totem 
existence very well. It was during a painful 
scene one Sunday morning. Jack had been 
naughty, and had recorded a scornful vow to 
say his prayers to the moo-cow like the chil- 
dren of Israel. The book of Judges had a 
fascination for him, and he wanted to be 
Gibeon. There was a solemn pause after this 
regretable statement, and Jack having deliv- 
ered his ultimatum pulled one of the dramatis 


204 tragedy of a green totem 


personae of the diluvian epoch out of the ark, 
and began to lick it. Hitherto that dramatis 
persona had been a Totem in all but the essen- 
tial point I have alluded to above, and as soon 
as Jack partook of it, it ceased to be of the 
family of Noah and became the Green Totem. 
Its character as a Totem, I consider to have 
been definitely established after the lapse of 
an hour or two, when it became evident that 
the brick-red paint had not interfered with 
Jack’s internal economy; for the Totem, as I 
have explained, does not injure its worship- 
pers. 

Jack always brought the Green Totem into 
my dressing-room in the morning, and for a 
time it eclipsed his desire to have razors. On 
one of these occasions its name was finally 
given it. Jack wished to call it Mrs. Noah, 
but I pointed out to him that he could not tell 
whether it was not one of the Misses Noah, or 
Shem, Ham or Japhet. He maintained that 
it was impossible that Shem, Ham or Japhet 
should dress in pea green because they were 
men, and that therefore the choice was limited 
to the women, and I retorted by saying, “How 
about Robin Hood?” 

That argument was of course unanswerable, 
but Jack turned the tables on me by asking 


TRAGEDY OF A GREEN TOTEM 205 


wliat it’s name was, if it wasn’t Mrs. Noah. 
Naturally I replied, “the Green Totem,” or for 
the sake of brevity, “Totem.” Jack was only 
half satisfied. ‘ ‘Did I know for certain that 
Totem was one of Noah’s family names?” 

“Well, not exactly, but I thought that there 
were invincible objections to calling the indi- 
vidual by any other name, whereas there were 
positively none to calling it Totem ’ and then 
we went down to breakfast, Jack, Green 
Totem, and myself. 

Totem lived mainly in Jack’s pocket, but it 
had a country house in the stem of a hollow 
oak tree in the garden, and we went to 
Totem’s “at homes,” and arranged its furni- 
ture, and turned its bedroom into its sitting 
room, and its dining-room into its front hall, 
with a familiarity that I am afraid it must 
have considered bordered on impertinence. 

When we went to call on Totem, we used 
to discuss the state of the weather or the crops 
for a few minutes, and then one of us would 
notice that a blade of grass had begun to grow 
in the dining-room, in a way that threatened 
to leave Totem no room to eat in. Now in 
the hall that would not matter; it would only 
be like the india rubber tree at home; so 
Totem was picked up and laid in its kitchen 


206 tragedy of a green totem 


garden till the necessary change had been 
made. It is true that by the new arrange- 
ment the hall door led straight into the din- 
ing-room, and that you had to pass through 
that splendid apartment to get to the hall ; but 
that was a less serious inconvenience than not 
having room to use your knife and fork; and 
in five minutes Totem held another “At 
Home,” and we shook our heads again over 
the rainy August, and the backward state of 
the wheat. 

Green Totem had a long and eventful 
career. Of course it started by being a full 
grown Totem, aud could plunge into the wild 
vortex of life without any of the preliminary 
skirmishing of childhood and youth. It began 
by gaining signal victories over all the animals 
in its native ark, and though the brim of its 
hat, which was of the shape that appears to 
have been almost universal in diluvian times, 
got chipped and broken, being made of wood, 
which I maintain is not a suitable material to 
wear on the head when you are fighting lions 
who are constructed of the same vegetable 
substance, Totem’s spirit remained unbroken 
to the end. But though its hat, as I say, got 
chipped when it came in contact with the 
lions, for Totem’s method of attack was to 


TRAGEDY OF A GREEN TOTEM 207 


butt them with its head — an invention, the 
merits of which, I submit, have been distinctly 
unappreciated — yet the legs of the lions got 
equally broken when they came into contact 
with the hat, and there were as many pin-legs 
when the campaigns were over as there were 
chips out of Totem’s hat. Totem always 
stood upon a small wooden disc, as befitted a 
god, and when that was broken it could not 
stand at all, as its feet were irregular in shape, 
and by no means subtended its centre of gra- 
vity. But Totem was terrible, even when it 
leaned against a tea-cup. 

I speak of Totem in the neuter gender, 
because it could not possibly be classed with 
things masculine or feminine. It went through 
its terrific encounters with the diluvian 
menagerie with a firmness of purpose which 
though manly, is embodied in no man; it did 
the honors of its country house with a dignity 
unknown to duchesses, and its neuter char- 
acteristics were more strongly marked than 
either of these. Just as the masculine gender 
would be unsuitable to it when it was at home, 
and the feminine gender when it was fighting 
elephants and large white hens on the wilds 
of the Turkey carpet, so both masculine and 
feminine genders were glaringly inadequate to 


208 TRAGEDY OF A GREEN TOTEM 


express Totem in repose, and it really seemed 
more suitable to talk of it as “they,” for it 
was a variety of distilled types embodied in 
one unique entity. Even in its country house 
Totem was he and she, for Jack and I took it 
in turns to be Totem, and unless we can inter- 
pret the rapid change of voice from a deepish 
bass to a shrill piping treble as being a mere 
mockery on Totem part, or a rapid succession 
of bronchial catarrhs, neither of which .expla- 
nations seems to me at all tenable, we must 
I think, allow the possibility of a plurality of 
persons in Totem. 

About a fortnight after Totem’s stand had 
come off, it began to get very much frayed 
about the feet; its heels disintegrated alto- 
gether, and the disease was spreading up the 
legs. It was obviously serious, and we resorted 
to drastic, but I am glad to say, effectual rem- 
edies. The stumps were cut neatly off at the 
point where they joined its solid green ulster, 
two tin tacks were driven in, and Totem could 
stand again. This saved its life in at least 
two ways: in the first place it is clear that the 
disease would have spread, and ultimately 
undermined its constitution, and in the second 
place it saved Totem from drowning in a 
rather curious manner. 


TRAGEDY OF A GREEN TOTEM 209 


One day Totem was sailing about in its 
yacht on a small pond near its country house. 
Like Ulysses, it was tied to the mast to pre- 
vent it falling overboard, but the cotton came 
undone, and Totem took the neatest little 
header into the water. Its specific gravity 
enabled it to float, but as it was circular, the 
chances were exactly even that its face would 
be under water, and that it would drown in 
spite of its specific gravity. But its tin feet 
were of a denser specific gravity than the rest 
of its body, wherefore they inclined directly 
downwards, whereby the whole of Totem’s 
head was out of the water. Any immediate 
danger therefore was averted, but though we 
spent some time throwing sticks and stones at 
Totem, we did not succeed in getting it to 
land. However, if a wind sprang up in the 
night, we were sure to find it ashore in the 
morning. 

But no wind sprang up ; on the contrary, it 
froze hard, and next morning Totem was still 
visible as far as its shoulders, but it was even 
more out of reach than ever, for the ice would 
not bear. We could just see its head appear- 
ing above the thinly frozen surface, and it 
talked to us for a few minutes. On the whole 
we decided that it looked pretty cheerful. 


2io TRAGEDY OF A GREEN TOTEM 


The frost lasted two nights, and then snow 
fell; thick snow, covering everything up. 
This is important. The pond lay in a small 
hollow, and when the snow melted in the 
course of a few days, the water drained down 
on the ice, and covered it to the depth of 
about half an inch. Totem of course vanished 
entirely, but we settled that it had been so 
long in the water that it had probably become 
a sort of fish, and that the water did not matter 
to it. any longer. 

Then the frost set in again; the water on 
the top of the old ice was entirely frozen up, 
and in a few days we were skating over 
Totem’s head. We could see it in the ice, as 
I mentioned before, like a bee in amber, and 
though we were so near, we were very far. 
Small oblations in the shape of minute pieces 
of cake were left for it, and as they had always 
vanished by next day it was clear that Totem 
was alive and well, and that there was no rea- 
son to be apprehensive, even on the ground of 
its starving to death. Totem obviously knew 
much that was not dreamed of in our philoso- 
phy. 

When the frost broke up, we found one 
morning a sodden, stranded Totem on the 
edge of the pond. Evidently that exposure 


TRAGEDY OTA GREEN TOTEM 21 1 


was the cause of its death, for it brought on a 
tendency to splinter all over its body. In its 
weak state, it was sheer madness to lie down 
on the gravel by the front door in a wheel rut. 
In a stronger condition, it might have escaped 
any fatal effects from a carriage wheel passing 
over it, at the expense of a little general tat- 
tooing of pebbles into the green ulster; indeed 
such a thing had happened before, but in its 
enfeebled condition, it was an inconceivable 
stupidity. But Totem was always headstrong. 

The ‘‘small slain body” was picked up an 
hour or two afterwards, but life was extinct. 

We found some slight consolation in the 
pomp of its funeral, which was followed by 
its own bereaved family, and the diluvian 
menagerie, which forgave and forgot all prev- 
ious disagreements, though the contemplation 
of so many pin-legs standing round Totem’s 
grave must have given rise to a certain feeling 
of relief in the minds of the meaner animals, 
when they saw Totem’s coffin lowered into 
the floor of its country house. 

It is a commonplace, that at the most 
solemn moments the most frivolous thoughts 
will occur to one; and as we raised the box of 
Bryant and May’s safety matches, in which 
was laid what was once Totem, on to the 


2i2 TRAGEDY OF A GREEN TOTEM 


shoulders of two elephants, it struck me that 
the prototype of a certain advertisement of 
that firm had undergone a sudden incarnation. 

At the door of Totem’s country house, Jack 
erected a small wooden board, which at the 
same time gave notice that Totem’s house 
was to let, and recorded the fact of his demise 
in straggling letters laid on with Aspinall’s 
enamel. The inscription was terse, and 
pointed “Totem is dead.” But no fresh 
Totem applied for the lease, and the house is 
still untenanted. 

I often pass the place, seldom without 
thinking of Totem, and other things. 


THE DEATH WARRANT 








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THE DEATH WARRANT. 


I T seems that I am not going to remain in 
this vast cold world for very long; that is 
good news to me. And because you have fol- 
lowed me so far already, because you have 
looked with me at sadness, because you have 
faced death with me, and because I have made 
you all sharers in my sorrows and in my 
happinesses, it is fitting that I should say 
good-bye to you, as you will have very few 
words more from me, and that I should tell 
you why I have to say good-bye and with 
what feelings I do so. 

For some weeks past, I have suspected this. 
I knew that my father, my grand-father and 
one of my aunts died of the same disease — it 
has an ugly, cruel name, cancer, and we will 
not dwell on it — and I have thought lately 
that I was going to follow the same road. 
Yesterday, I went to see a doctor. I knew 


216 


THE DEA TH WARRANT 


very soon by his face that I was right, and I 
urged him to tell me exactly what my case 
was. Yes, it was cancer. Was there any 
hope of saving my life by any operation? No, 
none; it was in a vital spot. How long had I to 
live? Perhaps six months, because I am very 
strong. We will not talk any more about 
cancer. 

And now twenty-four hours have passed, 
and I have grown used to the thought. I am 
no longer lonely, for a kindly presence has 
come to me, whom they call Death. L,et me 
tell you quite shortly what I have thought 
about in the last twenty-four hours, and that 
will be all. 

May I treat you all quite intimately? May 
I say things to you that I would say only to 
those I trusted and loved? Surely, for if you 
have read these little things which I have told 
you, these six common things as I have called 
them, you know me well. In this last half 
hour perhaps I have gained a friend, or if not 
that, I have treated you as if you were my 
friends, and I cannot go back now. But if 
you have laughed at them, if you have sneered, 
if you have thought that these stories are 
foolish, stupid, mock-heroic, you may still 
read on; but I am not talking to you, I have 


THE DEA TH WARRANT 


217 


given you my heart, I could give you no more. 
If it is worthless, toss it away. Soon I shall 
not care. But let us walk together a few 
steps towards the mouth of the valley of the 
shadow. 

So then at last I am face to face with the 
great mystery, the inconceivable end of life. 
Believe me it is not so dreadful. I have always 
looked on death with horror, with a feeling of 
passionate revolt, but now that is gone. Per- 
haps when one is going to die, one is in a 
way fitted for it, and it becomes as natural as 
life. Once before I was face to face with 
death, on a frozen peak of the great Zermatt 
mountains. I had slipped when climbing 
about alone, and for a few seconds, until I 
dropped on to an unsuspected ledge above the 
great ice fall below, I was alone with God 
and death, and I was not frightened. And 
now I am not frightened; only a miracle 
could save my life; humanly speaking I must 
die; in a year I shall know this earth no longer, 
I shall be a name, and soon not even that. 
What do I then look forward to? I hardly 
know. It is impossible for a living being to 
contemplate annihilation; it is inconceivable. 
This one can only realize for oneself; when 
those we love pass from us, all we know is 


218 


THE DEATH WARRANT 


that they are gone ; that to us, as living beings 
on this earth, they have passed forever; they 
are dead. 

And if not annihilation, what then? Life 
surely in some form, and if this is inevitably 
true for us, it is true for them, for Jack, for 
— ah God, is that true? 

So I do not fear, but I look forward to this 
change that will soon happen to me, with the 
intensest longing and wonder. What will it 
be? I wish I could come back and tell you. 

But here am I in the presence of that which 
I always thought of with loathing, with 
abhorrence, and let this be some comfort to 
you, who fear and dread death, who think of 
it as a horrible cruel, annihilation. Believe 
me when it comes to you, you will feel how 
impossible that is, and try to realize it now. It 
is worth while — there is suffering enough for 
all already. 

And in the meantime, what am I going to 
do? They have told me that two months out 
of these six at least will be passed in pain 
which is terrible and wearing — they can relieve 
that a good deal with morphia and other drugs 
but while I am conscious I shall not be my- 
self, I shall not be able to think, I shall be 
tired and racked with this pain. 


THE DEATH WARRANT 


219 


So then I have four months before the strug- 
gle begins ; till then they say, I shall not suffer 
much. How shall I spend it? 

Well, first of all, I shall finish writing this 
little book. That will not take long now, and 
then? I think I shall behave quite as usual, 
for I do not see how I could behave differently. 
I do not fear death, and it will be useless to 
think of the two weary months before death 
comes. Some men, I know, believe that they 
would put an end to themselves. That I 
could not do. That death would be horrible, 
unnatural, and I have an idea that it would 
be like running away; it is worth while, I 
think, to be brave. 

It is now March. The hint of spring was 
whispered through the trees yesterday. I 
noticed that as I came back from the doctor’s 
house. I was dazed, confused, then, but I can 
remember now that I noticed it. The buds on 
the lime tree were red, and on the ash the black 
knots had appeared. April and May will come 
and go; the birds will build again, and the 
swallows will wheel and circle round the barn 
where they make their nests. Everything 
will go on quite as usual. I want to realize 
that. June — ah, I am sorry I shall only see 
June once more; that from the hay-fields the 


220 


THE DEA TH WARRANT 


breath of summer will steal up over the lawn 
no more after that for me. I hope the night- 
ingales will build here again this year. There 
is a beech-tree not far from the door, where 
they built last year, and one night when the 
moon was up, I went softly out and sat down 
under the tree, while between me and the 
infinite sky the bird told his heart to the still 
air. 

And after that comes July, and that last 
moment, when I shall stand at my window, 
and say good-bye to the sleeping'summer night 
for ever. That last night, before I pass 
upstairs to wait for the end, should be fine 
and windless; summer should be at its full, 
luxuriant, with promise of infinite summers 
to come for the delight of man. 

I would not have it different. I want to be 
quiet for these few months, to sit and think, 
to wonder, to prepare for the great change, 
which is new to me, for I have never regarded 
death as coming near me. Yet here he is, an 
old friend of twenty-four hours’ standing, 
waiting for me, and his face is kind, and in 
his eyes I see a promise, which he may not 
tell me yet. 

So much life then I have still before me, 
for those two later months I cannot count as 


THE DEA TH WARRANT 


221 


life, and before they come I want to find ou; 
why they are coming. It seems unnecessary 
and cruel. That is the only complaint I have 
to make. 

There is one more thing I have to ask you. 
When September comes, think of me for a 
minute or two. Choose some quiet autumn 
night, when the winds are still, when a har- 
vest moon shines big over the yellow fields, 
and before that moment comes when summer 
stops. Stand for a little while looking out 
into the night, for in the night, thoughts 
which only hover restlessly round our busy 
brains during the day, come home to their 
nests, and, if you can, think this: that there 
is one who was very tired and very lonely, to 
whom the beauty of earth and air was a mys- 
tery that he could not fathom, but in which 
sometimes he found peace, and that to him 
perhaps at this moment there is coming some- 
thing so strange, so wonderful and so new, 
that he may even now be learning the mean- 
ing of what has puzzled, has wearied him ; 
that perhaps into his dimlit soul a light has 
entered which has made things plain, or that 
at the worst they trouble him no longer. 
That he is very thankful, and very content, 
and that he in turn has thought of you, who 


222 


THE DEATH WARRANT 


have shared some of his sorrows with him, 
and that at the end of the dark valley there is 
light shining. And then, thank God for all 
this. 


LATIN-AMERICAN REPUBLICS 

Under this general title we are pub- 
lishing a series of histories of South 
American and Central American Re- 
publics, countries which are known to 
English and American readers only 
through the medium of books of travel 
and histories of limited periods. Closer 
commercial relations with these coun- 
tries, their enormous resources, and the 
many thrilling incidents in their his- 
tories make most important this series 
of books, giving a complete presentation 
of their past and present national life. 
Each volume is being written by a fore- 
most authority, will cover the period from 
pre-Columbian times to 1892, and will 
be profusely illustrated. 

I. History of Peru, by Clements R. Markham. 

C. B., F. R. S., F. S. A., President Hakluyt Society, 
late Secretary Royal Geographical Society, and au- 
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8 vo. Cloth, - - - - - $2.50 

II. History of Chile, by Anson Uriel Hancock, 

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Author of “Old Abraham Jackson,” “Coitlan; A Tale of the Inca 
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ill. History of Brazil, by John C. Redman and 
William Eleroy Curtis, - - - $2.50 

Author of “Capitals of Spanish America,” etc., and Director of the 
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IV. History of Argentina, by Mary Aplin Sprague. 

8vo. Cloth, - - - $2.50 

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Other volumes are in preparation. 

The above books will be sent postpaid on receipt of price by 
the publishers. 

CHARLES H. SERGEL & CO., CHICAGO. 



Three Literary Masterpieces 


By ALFRED DE MUSSET:— 


Barberine, and Other Comedies. i6mo. Cloth, gilt 
top, $1.25 

The grace and delicacy of his remarkable dramas, the intensity 
with which the story is adapted to the moral, the abundant wit which 
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De Musset was the merry and capricious Ariel, taking it into his 
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The Beauty Spot, and Other Stories. i6mo. Cloth, 

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In the quality of his fancy Musset always reminds us of Shakes- 

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His nouvelles are extraordinarily brilliant; his poems are charged 
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“The Confession of a Child of the Century” is rather a monody 
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The above books are beautifully bound in gold and silver and 
blue and brown. They will be sent postpaid on receipt of the 
price by the publishers. 


CHARLES H. SERGEL & CO., CHICAGO. 
























I 









THE DEESTRICK SKULE 

OF 

FIFTY YEARS AGO 

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The Dramatic Publishing Company 

7 1 8 CHICAGO 














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